Non-Latin Web Domains

October 30th, 2009 - 3 Comments

“By the middle of next year, Internet surfers will be allowed to use Web addresses written completely in Chinese, Arabic, Korean, and other languages using non-Latin alphabets,” The New York Times reports. “In an action billed as one of the biggest changes in the Web’s history, the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers—or Icann—voted Friday during its annual meeting, held in Seoul, to allow such scripts in Internet addresses.”

Smeal’s John Jordan weighs in on the business implications and historical significance of this decision:

The expansion of the Internet domain name system from 37 Latin characters (26 letters, 10 digits, and a hyphen) to include character-based languages is a landmark event for the globalization of communications. More than 100,000 characters will eventually be added, so at one level the decision by Icann to accept the technical challenge (particularly, but not exclusively, at the level of the root name servers) is noteworthy. From a business standpoint, the decision marks a recognition of the growing importance of such character-based languages as Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Billions more people will be able to connect to the Internet using their native language and keyboards.

The decision raises a variety of fascinating questions. Given the rapid adoption of mobile Internet in the developing world, how will the availability of domain names in numerous character sets affect the design of smartphones for these markets? Given that Chinese relies on about 6,000 characters, for example, a RIM Blackberry-style keyboard would be difficult or impossible to implement.  On the marketing front, how will global brands adapt to the wider availability of non-Latin representation online? How will native-language Internet naming affect literacy efforts and measurements? How will a vastly multiplied character set affect security efforts?

At another level, the action is a splendid piece of historical timing: The first Internet message was sent 40 years ago this week, and the Netscape Navigator browser launched 15 years ago this month.  Predicting where the international, mobile Internet will be in even five years is impossible; coping with change of this magnitude at this speed is unprecedented in human experience.

Tags: Globalization, Jordan, Technology

This entry was posted on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 2:26 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Non-Latin Web Domains”

1. Chime Web Hosting says:

   November 1, 2009 at 5:55 am

   Will I be able to access a website whose address I cannot type on my keyboard?
2. John Myers says:

   November 4, 2009 at 10:10 am

   This change means more for “local” Internet users than “global” users.

   Imagine if the Internet were invented in Russia. To use it, you would be forced to type in the Cyrillic characters of the Russian alphabet rather than the Latin characters that Americans know & love. This would be a major inconvenience … because you would either have to buy a new keyboard or become comfortable with “creating” characters that your keyboard did not support!

   More than any other vehicle, the Internet has made English a World Language. In countries like China, few individuals know English. This change opens up the Chinese population to web and eMail addresses that appear in THEIR language. The issue will become one that many Internet users will need to have two or more alias’s for their web sites and eMail addresses. They will need one in English, one in their native language, and others for each other language that they conduct business.

   This change may also force the more immediate adaptation of the IPv6 system for Internet addressing (over the IPv4 system [formats like 67.131.137.41] that is commonly in use today) in order to support all of the new IP addresses that will result from this change.
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   November 23, 2009 at 8:05 pm

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