ICANN today approved the first four internationalized top-level domain names. Egypt, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have passed the language character (string) evaluation, intended to avoid confusion with other top level domain names.
Egypt, Russia, Saudi Arabia and UAE may now request that their Internet names be included in the Internet domain names root system, so they can be accessed by all users globally by mid-2010. These international names will now allow people to type entire domain names in their own language. "This marks a pivotal moment in the history of Internet domain names,” said ICANN CEO and President Rod Beckstrom. ICANN have received sixteen applications in eight languages and expects to receive some more.