ICANN published evaluation results of the first 27 new global top-level domains.
The top-level domains are ‘dot word’ domains in the style of .com or .org. They are expected to go live in phases this year. Evaluation results are to be released 30 per week until August this year.
The first group approved over the weekend were all non-Latin scripts, written in langauges including Arabic, Chinese and Cyrillic. One of the winning applications translates to .web in Arabic, for example.
The approved applicants must next negotiate a contract with ICANN and have its systems tested before their domains can go live.
ICANN decided the order in which it reviews applications in December. The state of Victoria (.Melbourne), iSelect (.select), Monash University (.monash) and Commonwealth Bank (.cba) drew some of the highest slots among Australian organisations.
ARI Registry Services, a Melbourne-based registrar, said ICANN approved four of the applications it submitted in this first round.
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