Monday, November 2, 2009

Domain Name in local languages

ICANN recently announced to allow domain names to be in local non-Romanic languages. So, we will see www.???.?? pop up in places that we would never have envisioned before. Is it a good thing or bad thing? Certainly, the wise guys must have thought them thoroughly and 'various forces' from behind must have made their voices heard. To me, I think definitely there would be both pros and cons. For me personally, as I've been comfortable using English on web communication for so long, the so-called advantages of using local languages wouldn't benefit me at all. Instead, it may cause more confusion and I can see cons more.

Anyone remember back then when corporations or interested parties fought their asses off to register their domain names on the web in order to secure potential traffic to their site? Now, they have to do that again with X times of the effort. Also, many folks will be able to profit again by fighting to own certain domain names and sell them to the highest bidder in future. That's the major economic front of the whole thing. For me, if I want to go to certain site in local languages, I just need to bookmark the master domain and click the local language support link in the site to get there. But, I may have to remember the domain for local languages as well. Don't just get to the technical setup for multi-languages input, the human side of learning to input in local languages could be a hassle as well.

To me, I don't know if this new opening of multi-languages is really a good idea or not. We suppose to bring people together rather than grouping them separately. Yes, the 'Bebel' thing is being brought up in the discussion in forums about this issue. To me, I don't like it a bit.

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