ICANN Approves Internationalized Domain Names

October 30th, 2009

Not only is the Internet just turning 40 years old, it’s truly going global with new extensions that will someday make it possible for entire web-site addresses to be written in every language in the world. On Friday, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers agreed to introduce a number of internationalized domain names. IDNs allow scripts such as Chinese, Korean or Arabic to be used in the last portion of an address name — the part after the dot, such as dot-com and dot-org.

This is a significant milestone in the globalization of the Internet and comes after years of work. ICANN is predicting IDNs could lead to a dramatic increase in the number of global Internet users.

Read the rest of my story on NewsFactor.

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