For the first time in history of the internet, addresses without Latin characters have been launched. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates are among the first countries to get the upcoming “country codes” in Arabic script. It will also be given for Chinese, Thai and Tamil users to use the internet in their own language.

Rod Beckstrom, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), President termed this a historic move and mentioned that a lot of behind the scenes work is responsible for this measure.

About 20 countries have already sought approval for international domains from Icann. China was the first country to develop systems that made it possible to enter a web address in Chinese. It noted that there is still some time before non-Latin scripts can be properly integrated into Internet infrastructure and cannot work on all the computers.

There were doubts before these changes were made that concerns that the Internet may be divided between users able to access Western sites and those who mainly accessed Arabic language web sites.

There are also reports that a special domain for adult content had been requested and the companies are demanding to know the decision related to this domain. Icann has not been willing to give any concrete reply on this decision. People, who support this, argue that a .xxx domain will make the internet a lot safer than what it is today. A panel of US judges had ruled in February this year that Icann’s reasons for withdrawing this domain were invalid.

Source : http://topnews.com.sg/content/21537-net-now-more-global-new-domain-names