Just about a year ago ICANN gave their approval to one of the most significant changes in top level domains in the history of the Internet, allowing the creation of entirely new generic top-level domains (gTLDs). For example allowing coke to create websites with the name Drink.Coke, or banks to use more generic URL endings such as .bank. Many people aren't too thrilled with the idea, failing to see the point beyond the obvious enrichment of registrars and others in the domain business -- not to mention the benefit to spammers and cybersquatters.

There are currently 22 generic top-level domains, including .com, .org and .net, and things are about to get dramatically more complicated. ICANN this week revealed the 1,930 applicants for these new gTLDs, bidding for which started at the bargain basement price of $185,000.

The ICANN list of applicants contains the usual suspects, Google alone submitting applications for 100 different gTLDs via the company's Charleston Road Registry domain name subsidiary. Amazon also had a significant number of applications -- 76 to be precise -- many of them gunning for the same gTLDs as Google (.cloud, .mail, and .app).

ICANN says they company will now review the applications to ensure they don't violate trademarks or threaten the "security and stability" of the Internet by being too similar to existing URLs. Many critics believe the move is simply a move to cash in on companies that are forced into defensively registering gTLDs to keep pace with competitors -- or to prevent critics from setting up websites that could harm product brands.

You'll get to see the result of the effort early next year when the first of these domains are expected to go live.