Web URLs No Longer Dominated by Latin Alphabet

A day after the Internet celebrated its 40^th birthday, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers announced that it had reached a decision that amounted to one of its biggest changes in history. The body in charge of assigning and overseeing domain names said that Internet addresses will soon be able to be spelled in any of the world's scripts, not just the Latin alphabet. "This is only the first step, but it is an incredibly big one and an historic move toward the internationalization of the Internet," ICANN's President and CEO Rod Beckstrom said. The program will be rolled out in stages, beginning Nov. 16. At first it will apply only to addresses with "country code designators," such as .ru for Russia, but it will eventually expand to all types of names.

Read original story in Reuters | Friday, Oct. 30, 2009