Two developments were announced this week that will interest
brand owners. First, the fast track internationalized domain name
process for country code domain names was launched by the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Second, the .eu
registry in the European Union announced that it will begin
accepting applications for second-level domain names (the name in
front of the dot) with a number of non-Latin and special characters
beginning December 10, 2009.
ccTLD Internationalized Domain Name Fast Track Process
On November 16, ICANN began accepting applications from
countries that are interested in launching ccTLDs, country code top
level domain names -- the name after the dot such as .jp, in
non-Latin characters. When writing in their native language, over
half of the world's Internet users write in non-Latin
characters. ICANN received applications from six countries for
ccTLDs in characters in three different languages on the first
