ICANN delays vanity Web domain deadline

If you were scrambling to get your application in to meet today’s deadline to get what amounts to an online vanity plate to replace “.com” in your business’ Web address, you can relax a little. A system glitch has granted you an extension.

Today, 839 participants were to have their applications in to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, but ICANN discovered a technical issue with its top-level domain application system, or TAS.

“ICANN is taking the most conservative approach possible to protect all applicants and allow adequate time to resolve the issue. Therefore, TAS will be shut down until Tuesday at 23:59 UTC -- unless otherwise notified before that time.”

The group has extended the application deadline until April 20. No word on whether ICANN will push back from April 29 the announcement of who applied for what names.

Last June, ICANN opened the floodgates to, essentially, dot-anything from the 22 existing domains. The group, which has overseen the Internet’s naming system since 1998, has been planning the naming expansion for the better part of the last decade.

Although the applicants haven’t been made public, Google and Canon have confirmed they are bidding for their own domain-name suffixes.

Now before you get excited and hurry to file your own application, the process is essentially already closed. Companies had to sign up to be part of the process by March 29 to qualify. And each application costs $5,000 -- plus there’s an $185,000 evaluation fee.

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