ICANN approves non-Latin domains
In a landmark move, internet regulator ICANN has approved the use of non-Latin characters in top-level domains, with the first expected to appear some time next year.
Genuine Arabic, Chinese and Cyrillic domains will now become possible rather than the imperfect system of internationalized domains (IDNA) relying on character conversion which has already been in limited use.
Given the global nature of the internet, the real question is What took them so long?
Cynics suggest that because ICANN (the company responsible for the management of top-level domains) is an American organisation, there has been an inherent bias toward the use of the Western character set online. There has even been the suggestion that ICANN’s US-centric tight control of domain names could amount to restriction of free trade.
A large part of the delay is undoubtedly down to the technical complexity of the change; instead of being limited to 37 characters, URLs will now be able to use over 100,000. When you’re responsible for the architecture of the net it’s sensible to ensure any changes don’t break it.
New internet landscape
If the web still seems an English-dominated, Western environment, it’s probably because those are the only parts us English-speaking Westerners are looking at. It’s a bit like a Mongolian yak herder assuming that everyone else on the planet has a herd of yaks. I mean, why wouldn’t they?
English is still the international language or ‘lingua franca’, but today most of the growth in internet use is happening in non-English speaking countries.
- More than 338 million of China’s 1.3 billion population are now online
- The entire population of the United States is only 307 million
- Over 20% of internet users worldwide are Chinese, a further 6% are Japanese
With such as large number of internet users who don’t use Latin characters in their daily lives, the decision to grant them genuine non-Latin domain names is overdue and should be welcomed.
Applications for non-Latin character domains will open by 16th November 2009.
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