In the News: ‘.horse is here and the Internet will never be the same’

“.horse” is #1,317 in a list of nearly 2,000 new top-level domains that will soon be rolled out to take the burden off old standards like “.com”.

(Headline from this story on theverge.com.)

Top-level domains (TLDs) are the short suffixes at the end of a web address–.com, .org, .gov, .edu, etc.–that indicate the kind of site to which it is pointing.

Currently, there are fewer than 20 TLDs. But soon, that number will expand to 1,900, designed to encompass a sweeping range of interests: .luxury, .mom, .bible, .wed… the list goes on and on.

.horse made the cut.

From the Washington Post,

“The changes are going to add specificity and introduce a new search logic,” says Jennie-Marie Larsen, who started a consulting firm just to help businesses figure out what to do with their new domains. And, she hopes, it will tie existing communities closer together: A few years from now, all equestrian fans of the world might unite under .horse, which has been purchased by Top Level Domain Holdings, a business created for the new market. From the application: ‘The purpose of the .HORSE . . . is to offer horse owners, service providers, horse industry employees and volunteers the opportunity to clearly define their presence on the Internet and to help potential customers gain access to content about horses.’

Back up–someone already owns .horse?

Yep. ICANN, a non-profit organization that oversees the Internet’s naming conventions, made the new TLDs available to anyone who wished to apply for them and pay the $185,000 application fee. Later, individuals like you and I will be able to pay for the right to use the TLDs through the TLD owners.

.horse was purchased by a publicly-traded, Virgin Island-based company called Top Level Domain Holdings, which applied for dozens of different TLDs.

The new TLDs could start going into use as early as September.

So… should we change our name to HorseNation.horse?

Nah, that would be weird.

A big thanks to Kevin Dorn for the tip! Go Riding.