For around £50,000, within the next couple of years, almost anybody will be able to register www.almost.anything. The BBC is calling it “a complete overhaul of the way in which people navigate the internet”, which though rather sensationalist, isn’t far off the mark.

The two main forms of navigation online are direct, and link. The latter will remain unchanged, while direct navigation will be opened up to infinite possiblities, and hence infinite confusion.

Picture the scenario: I drive past Barry’s Motors one Saturday morning, and spot a car I really like. Later that week, I remember my drive-by, open my laptop, and start to try and guess their website address (as lots of people do). After much distress, I finally end up going to Google and finding the new web address is barrys.motors. How would I have ever managed to type that in to the address bar? I didn’t even know .motors existed.

So the first point is - Google will benefit from the large dose of confusion that ICANN will inject into direct navigation through increased query frequency.

Part of this confusion will stem from del.icio.us-style use of extensions in branding. User’s can’t just add .com or .co.uk to a brand name. That would be too simple. This will bring about another change though, this time in search from Google’s perspective. Extensions will now truly have to be treated as keywords. They are part of the brand. If I decide to register http://luke.eales, then both the keyword AND extension combine to make up the full keyword. More weighting must be given to this in the future in light of ICANN’s changes.

PS. Very good news for growth of the internet in countries using foreign alphabets.