The beginning of the dot-whatever era

For years, we’ve had several choices for top level domains including .com, .net., and .org. Soon, we’ll have many, many more options, but only after the big brands can get their trademarks first.

Think .biz, .co, and .mobi were a little weird to see at the end of an Internet address? You ain’t seen nothing yet.

Because on Wednesday, the first 4 of a planned 1,400 new net-address suffixes — called generic top-level domains, or GTLDs — were built into the fabric of the Internet. The first four new GTLDs, taking advantage of the newer ability to extend beyond Latin character sets, are the Chinese word for game, the Arabic word for Web, and the Russian words for online and site.