If ICANN approves the sale of new top level domains, how will I be able to purchase my last name?
The announcement and FAQ is here:
Firstly: It talks of ‘established entities’ being eligible to apply. Which I think means orgs that already have or possibly control an existing TLD. So you are probably SOL.
I also heard that the cost will be in the six-figure range, presumably in USD.
So what is the point of adding top level domains if first dibs goes to those who already control the other TLDs? If microsoft.sdmb is created, but no one except Bill Gates can register it, how has this expanded the total pool of domains available?
You misunderstand - the top level domain goes at the very end: .com, .org, .net, .info, or .sdmb. As stated previously, only established entities will be allowed to administer these. They’ll then be happy to turn around and sell you microsoft.sdmb, if allowed by the charter of the TLD.
This is about the most underwhelming internet plan I have read about in the past 5 years. There are already a bunch of top level domains that people can use like “.tv” but hardly anyone does. Popular culture ranks “.com” domains at the very top followed by “.org” and “.edu”. Everything else is viewed as weird and exotic in a bad way. There is nothing wrong with expanding options but this one is just one big yawner.
What, you wouldn’t want a website at shagnasty.sdmb? 
I’m pretty sure www.shag.nasty would be more valuable. 
Almost always new TLD are useless, .BIZ has become synonymous with spam and .com is still the only one people really want, with .info having the best success, but even now you can pick up .info names for as little as a buck a year on sale.
The problem is everyone constantly thinks of a domain name as ending in .com so unless you have the .com your business is driven to the wrong site.
The thing is if you want a name and it’s common it’ll be zapped up quickly, if you have a name that’s the same or similar to a trademark (like Hilton or Marriott) you’ll be headed for a fall quickly. Even if you win you could incur cost in and out of court to keep it.
Domain names do resell but not like you hear. A few like business.com sold for millions but most resells now go for the few hundred to a thousand dollar mark.
Of course this will allow interesting gTLD (generic top level domains) like joe@joe.notlikely
But I don’t think it’ll work because people will still be expecting to here the .com at the end
I agree, but things can change pretty quickly on the internet.
From my understanding, the new domains won’t really work like most people in this thread and this other one think.
There won’t be a free-for-all of thousands of new top level domains. There won’t be domains like .sucks. You won’t be able to buy your last name as a domain. ICANN will not be selling them to just any rich idiot with $100,000 to throw away.
If you’re the city government of New York City you might be able to buy .nyc as a domain. If you’re the Vatican you might be able to buy .catholic. Maybe Disney can buy .disney. There will be a few specialized yet general domains sold at a time to organizations they trust and have vetted. I wouldn’t be surprised if many of the purchasers were outside the U.S. so they don’t have to have a double ending like .co.uk. Not to mention the use of non-Roman characters. That could potentially be a market changer in certain countries.
It’s not a bad deal, nor a rip-off, nor a frenzy. It’s a pretty good idea that needs a lot more public explanation but will be obvious once it gets up and going. So obvious that most people will wonder why they hadn’t done it sooner. (Why hadn’t they? No idea.)
E.g, everybody in New York shut out of .com because somebody is parking on the site will now have a chance to get “theirsite.nyc”. It’s better than .biz because it will target those in New York not the whole world, and people in New York will probably become as used to having a .nyc as the rest of us are used to having .com. Same with London, and Paris, and Rome, and L.A. and a hundred other big cities.
I’ll be flabbergasted if this doesn’t become huge in a few years.
This has already come up for .ru:
But this isn’t quite as nice as it sounds: Cyrillic characters are difficult to type in a Latin-oriented OS, and I’m sure the reverse is true. Hence this:
If you can’t type the address, you won’t be tempted to go there.
Politics. Drama. Money. Adults acting like 13-year-olds.
The problem is that the geographic-oriented domain names have been tried. They failed so quickly nobody noticed, but ancient addresses like well.sf.ca.us (The Well, a once-grand message board system in San Francisco, CA, US) still exist in archives from the early 1990s. Now The Well is simply well.com.
Remember VRML?
Your examples are out of the Jurassic Era. I don’t see why anybody would think they would apply today. Why would .sf fail because .sf.ca.us wasn’t viable when the Net consisted of 4% of the population using dial-up?
The culture surrounding the Internet has matured tremendously over the past decade. The Net isn’t some exotic mystery world for nerds but as common as the corner grocery. Commoner, today.
Some things fail not because they’re bad ideas but because they’re too early. This is not too early. It’s overdo. That makes all the difference.