Impact of ICANN’s decision to allow domain names in local languages
On 30th October at the ICANN conference in Seoul, Korea the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which governs domains, registrations, Internet Protocol addresses, and many other aspects of the internet 
decided to fast track the process to internationalize domain names (IDN). Very soon domain names would be made available in local languages and this to me is going to create a paradigm shift as far as localization of internet is concerned. This certainly is a brave step forward. ”Of the 1.6 billion internet users today worldwide, more than half use languages that have scripts that are not Latin-based,” Beckstrom, Icann president, said. “So this change is very much necessary for not only half the world’s internet users today but more than half, probably, of the future users as the internet continues to spread.” Source DNA
By early 2010 we would be able to book domain names in Hindi, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and a lot of other languages
Impact of localisation of domain names
Local reach: Doman names in local language will help companies to reach the large segment of the market which cannot access the web due to the absence of English speaking skills. Companies will have another avenue to market their product and services by creating websites that will have highly localized content online. For example a lot more people would be able to read this article in India considering the diversity in regional languages in India.
Acquire desired domain names: with restriction to Latin characters (A to Z) a lot of companies were forced to choose domain name that were available. With localization companies will have the opportunity to choose the desired name especially companies catering purely to local market will be at an added advantage.
Decide your own extension: One of the other major advancements discussed at the event was to allow companies to acquire new top-level domain names ending with extension of their choice. This change will enable businesses to use their business name as extension for example www.iphone.apple this will not only improve the branding but help them create series of domain names for their different products and services.
Drive search engine traffic: Search engines are focusing more and more on localized search and indexing and promoting local search results to users. As of today the percentage of people using local search as compared to global one is very low but moving forward the traffic generated by local searches will be significant. Proactive companies will be able to take an early movers advantage.
Service Providers: Service providers like registrars, hosting providers, web designers and SEO people will have tremendous opportunity to grow. The key here is to focus on selling domain name internationalization services at the right time. I would say start a campaign to gather database of people by displaying “register domain name in local languages” like in India register domain name in Hindi.
Companies will have to think fast and act upon it the moment it’s out in the open. The early movers will have to strategize and plan their domain name localization initiative. Companies who are agile in adopting local domain names will reap the rewards primarily in addressing local target audience and also win the search war when the localization of search heats up. Here in lies the opportunity for services providers to identify opportunities and grow their business.
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