ROBERT SIEGEL, Host: From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.</s>MICHELE NORRIS, Host: I'm Michele Norris. And it's time now for All Tech Considered.</s>MICHELE NORRIS, Host: As NPR's Tom Gjelten reports, we could soon see almost any word at the end of a Web address.</s>TOM GJELTEN: The Internet, since its creation, has been largely ungoverned. But for practical purposes, the online world does have to agree on a Web addressing system. One global body with real power is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN for short. And at a meeting in Singapore today, the ICANN board of directors changed website naming rules.</s>MICHELE NORRIS, Host: Today, we made history.</s>TOM GJELTEN: ICANN President Rod Beckstrom.</s>MICHELE NORRIS, Host: The Internet's addressing system has just been opened up to the limitless possibilities of human imagination and creativity.</s>TOM GJELTEN: Again, what Beckstrom is talking about is the last half of a website address, the words that follow the dot.</s>MICHELE NORRIS, Host: So when you think dot-com, dot-net, now think dot-open to new things, to new ideas.</s>TOM GJELTEN: Alexa Raad is chairman of Architelos, a consulting firm that advises companies on Internet naming. She sees advantages for a company moving from its old dot-com address to having a top-level domain all its own.</s>MICHELE NORRIS, Host: It is sort of like having an apartment in an apartment community versus owning the apartment community itself, which gives you greater control over the policies that you can enforce, over the security measures that you can enforce.</s>TOM GJELTEN: Tom Gjelten, NPR News, Washington.
The world's main Internet governing body Monday approved what may be the biggest change in the online world for many years. Soon, we may see website addresses that end with almost any word. It won't be just dot-com or dot-org or dot-net. We could have dot-NewYork or dot-Toyota. Companies, cities, even individuals, could have Web addresses all to themselves.