ICANN approves non-Latin characters for domain names
Roughly 1.6 billion internet users speak languages that don't use Latin characters. That's half of the people that usee the internet.
Officials describe the move as the "biggest technical change to the Internet since it was created four decades ago." Nations and territories will be able to apply for internet extensions reflecting their regions starting on November 16th. We'll probably start seeing Internationalized Domain Names starting in mid-2010.
[via TechCrunch]
Comments
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Subscribe to commentsKellieNov 1st 2009 6:53AM
Just as a point of clarification - IDNs, or internationalized domains have been available for years. The reason this decision is so huge has to do with what's on the right side of that dot. Instead of native Korean or Japanese speakers having to toggle between character sets they'll be able to enter *entire* addresses in their native tongue, including the TLD or extension.
As a westerner who was actually in Seoul for the ICANN meeting and stopped to use a free laptop at the airport I was frustrated in just a few minutes with having to swap character sets. I can only imagine how frustrating it's been for them all this time. Further, I now fully understand why advertisements include instructions for search instead of or in addition to the URL.
Now it's a matter of making sure that domain name registrars will offer the ability to register them and the appropriate tools to manage them. We, at Name.com have been working hard to prepare for this eventuality and hope other major domain registrars do the same.