ICANN approves '.asia' as top-level domain

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers signed off on the .Asia Registry Agreement on Wednesday at its annual meeting in Sao Paulo, Brazil, meaning that businesses in the Asia-Pacific region will soon have the option of registering an ".asia" domain. The top-level domain will be overseen by the DotAsia Organization. The ".asia" domain will be used as a supplement to country domains like ".jp" for Japan and ".cn" for China.

ICANN is a California-based organization that keeps tabs on the technical side of the Internet, including guiding traffic to gTLDs (generic Top-Level Domains) ike ".com". Because of the way the Internet evolved, the U.S. Department of Commerce has ultimate control over ICANN, a point of contention with other countries. DotAsia, according to an ICANN statement, is the first gTLD registry to be headquartered in the Asia-Pacific region.

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