ICANN issued the .xxx internet domain last year, much to the chagrin of the U.S. government which had advised it otherwise. A number of governments around the globe threatened to block the domain rightaway. However, the domain has stayed and it seems that ICM Registry, which runs .xxx, is set to launch an exclusive search engine of its own.
The search engine is meant exclusively for .xxx domain sites and is aimed at providing results straight from such websites. According to ICM, there are 240,000 internet addresses currently hosted at .xxx domain and the move will help drive more traffic to such pages.
Responding to the frequent objections cited towards porn, ICM’s chief executive Stuart Lawley stated, “There’s enough porn for anyone who wants to find it. If people hate porn, they can keep away from it.”
This step by ICM Registry may trigger a more wide-scale movement – that of independent topic-specific search engines. ICANN is already reviewing applications to issue thousands of new domains and once this is done, domains such as .bank will become available.
We can then witness the launch of a search engine, say, which is meant specifically for banking-related information. This may, however, also depend on how the existing giants in the web search arena respond to the expansion of internet domains.
Filed in ..