We’ve seen a whole lot of domain name suffixes in our short lifetime, where .mobi stands for mobile, .org stands for organization, and the long list goes on. What could have been a potentially lucrative domain name suffix, ‘xxx’, has been canned (no pun intended) by ICANN. Apparently the powers that be recently announced that you folks who regularly head over to adult sites will have to be content with the usual domain endings instead of settling more a more direct and targeted ‘xxx’ domain. According to ICANN chairman Vinton Cerf, he mentioned that the Internet agency “looked jolly hard at porn on the Interweb and came to the conclusion that giving it its own domain was not the way forward”.

I personally think that this is nothing but a storm in a teacup, after all, a rose by any other name smells just as sweet according to the Bard. Would a ‘xxx’ domain actually attract more traffic than current ones? I seriously doubt so, and those who already have their minds entrenched in this form of adult entertainment would definitely be wily enough to keep in touch with the latest developments within the industry to know which is the latest website to help satiate their appetite for more similar content.

Of course, some people might argue that having such a domain suffix will eliminate the accidental discovery of such sites for minors and the like as well as reduce the risk of embarrassment at a workplace. It also makes filtering out such websites to keep things child friendly easier. Which side of the fence are you on?

ICANN Resolution