First Internationalized Domain Names Go Live
The nonprofit group that manages the Internet's address system announced Thursday that the first non-Latin character domain names went live allowing those who speak Arabic to write some Internet addresses in their native language characters.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers said the new Internet addresses, also called domain names, will apply to the country-code Internet addresses belonging to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. So if you are a business or organization in Egypt with an Internet address that ends with that country's top-level domain name, .eg or .مصر in Arabic letters, you can choose to have your entire Internet address written using Arabic letters. This means that users who want to access sites using those domain names will no longer have to switch to Latin characters when writing the actual .eg country code.
Up until now, technical constraints have forced users in other countries to type in Latin characters for the last part of a domain even if the actual name of a Web site was written in Arabic or some other non-Latin characters.
"This is the beginning of a transition that will make the Internet more accessible and user friendly to millions around the globe, regardless of where they live or what language they speak," ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom said in a statement.
ICANN is currently weighing applications from 21 other countries or territories for internationalized domain names representing 11 different languages.
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