If it wasn’t already hard enough to remember the TLD for that website you heard about, it just got harder. You don’t just have .com, .net, and the other usual suspects to worry about anymore.

ICANN has voted on and approved a plan, starting in 2009, to allow anyone with $100,000 and a viable business plan to manage their own unique TLD and allow people to register it through them. Who will be quick enough to get .blog? (Maybe Google. It would go right along with Blogger…) How about .rss?

This opens more possiblities to get a short, logical domain. Wouldn’t it be cool to have http://design.blog/ or http://click.here/?

But there are a few downsides to this though…

• People already type .com automatically, and have trouble remembering URLs. Having thousands of TLDs will make it worse.
• It’s a trademark nightmare! Companies already go and register their domain on a wide variety of TLDs so the cybersquatters don’t go and take Microsoft.net or whatever. After securing the major TLDs, you then have Microsoft.computers, Microsoft.wtf…
• SEO will be more important than ever. You will have to be in the top 3 results in Google if you want anyone to make it to your site. I doubt anyone will remember that your domain is myexamplesite.lolcat.
• You have to have some really deep pockets if you want to register a new TLD. Few but the monster-sized corporations will be able to afford it. Congratulations ICANN, you’ve just made it easier for Time Warner and AT&T to take over the internet!
• There’s no way .com is going anywhere any time soon…

I assume ICANN just did this to line their pockets, and didn’t put a whole lot of thought into it. Everyone on the board who voted for it saw the big $100,000 and thought “and I’ll get a cut of the profit…”

If I understand this article correctly, ICANN is planning on allowing organizations to apply to create and manage new TLDs. If so, then that’s an interesting idea.

Imagine having a domain with a .blog or .tech extension, or .bowling or .design. Instead of worrying about the lack of .com domains, the generic TLD would become a thing of the past. You could just get a domain with a topical TLD, and have a short, memorable domain without having to spend too much time trying to find something that’s available.

Of course, there are problems with this idea. You would end-up with duplicates, for example. Suppose you had a website about design at example.blog. Other people could have sites at example.design and example.whatever. The cybersquatters would have a lot of fun with that… And then you have the whole issue of people automatically typing “.com” (or not recognizing it as a URL because of the lack of “.com”).  Be prepared to use Google a lot more, since you’ll be forgetting sites’ TLDs right and left.

There are plenty of implications going through my mind right now, and I imagine there are a lot more that I haven’t even thought of yet. On one hand I like the idea, but on the other hand…

What do you think? Is it a good idea to ave an infinite number of TLDs, or should ICANN just introduce a new generic TLD once in awhile?