example.test
International Domain Names Being Tested - Background and What to Expect
Posted October 12th, 2007 by adminInternational domain names are coming. I've covered this briefly before but it is time for an update.
On the 9th of October, ICANN announced the launch of a test internationalised TLD. In short, .test has been translated into 11 languages. TLD is the part of a domain name after the final dot. On the 15th ICANN will open example.test - a single website accessible in a variety of languages. Both example and .test will be translated into the 11 languages.
This is interesting, and not soon enough in my opinion. International domain names are already available. The bit before the dot being internationalised is not unusual, but the bit after the dot, so for example youtube.com and youtube.公司 actually resolve to the same website hasn't been done yet, well not properly.
Background
To understand the current situation properly, we should look at a few examples and understand some of the techy side.