The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) who are responsible for names assigned on the web have recently announced the new suffixes to be used over the internet and they are:

.biz(business), .name(individuals), .museum(museums), .pro(professionals), .aero(aviation), .coop(cooperatives), and .info(general).

These new classifications should be working by the end of June 2001 and are supposedly to provide alternatives to the heavily used .com version. Names are becoming increasingly difficult to register owing to the volume of registrations that are being received each month.

However, no sooner had the announcement been made but those organisations whose proposals were not picked, started to complain. Although ICANN have gone through the process of selecting the appropriate domains, they still have to go through the US Government's, Department of Commerce that have the final say whether they get the go-ahead.

The World Health Organisation were one who issued a statement at their disappointment for their proposal of .health not being accepted.

ICANN approached interested companies to apply to operate and manage new domain names in September and these companies had to pay non-refundable $50,000 (£35,000) to become record keepers for these new names. They could then charge a nominal amount for every name that is registered using their suffix.