The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which coordinates the Internet's naming system, opened up their doors today to allow companies, organizations, and cities to register for any generic top-level domain (gTLD) they wish.

The websites most of us frequent typically have extensions .com, .org, or .edu. This move will allow companies and organizations to use whatever extension they want. The costs and requirements will most likely shut smaller businesses out, leaving corporations like Coca Cola free to buy .coke, for example. Coke could then launch its own website drink.coke.

The Huffington Post said, "by the time the process is finished in 2013, Web addresses could start to look less like the streamlined World Wide Web we know today and more like the Wild Wild West." The Huffington Post went on to quote ICANN spokesman Brad White,

We're talking about a large number of words. It means a large number of characters as well, in Chinese, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic and Cyrillic. That can dramatically increase the Internet penetration rates globally

Will this mark the end of the dot-com era? Read the full article from the Huff Post and tell us what you think below.

More From The Moose 94.7 FM