ICANN plans to launch a single-letter domain name

Internet domain names are becoming longer and more complicated because the creation of website addresses in the .com frame is narrowed. Meanwhile, most of the simplest names like a.com and b.com have never been used.

Some sites like Overstock.com want to register the " o.com " brand because their new business process has expanded, not just to provide discounted inventory. In response to such requests, ICANN International Domain Name Organization has decided that the web address contains only one letter to be operational starting next year.

" Obviously this is a very valuable 'commodity' ," said Kurt Pritz, ICANN's vice president of business. " But how will these domain names be traded? Moreover, the transition will not be easy ."

The one-letter domain name with the suffix .com, .net and .org has been left aside since 1993 when programming engineers were concerned about the risk of a boom in domain demand. They are unsure whether the only domain database then has the capacity to accommodate millions of addresses (currently there are 40 million .com domains).

Only 6 single domain names that are recognized at that time are " q.com ", " x.com" , " z.com ", " i.net ", " q.net ," and " x.org " are given permission to continue to operate.

One suggestion is to separate this single database into 26 different databases. For example, the " .org " extension will be divided into " a.org ", " b.org " . Then, The Associated Press domain name, for example, is not " ap.org " but " ap.a.org ".

Currently, engineers have drawn that the above process is not necessary. The database can still save and manage millions of domains without any problems. Therefore, ICANN has accepted names containing 1 character.