Earlier this week, the Board of Directors of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) ruled in favor of allowing customers the right to register domain names that end in any combination of letters.

“Today’s decision respects the rights of groups to create new Top Level Domains in any language or script,” Rod Beckstrom, President and CEO of ICANN, stated in a press release. “We hope this allows the domain name system to better serve all of mankind.”

The decision allows for a variety of new domain endings, such as sites ending in .books or .music, rather than requiring the use of more conventional standards that dominate the web today.

The adoption of these generic top-level domains, or gTLDs, creates a nearly limitless amount of possibilities for domain endings, dependent upon the number of submissions ICANN receives and approves.

ICANN is providing a small window of opportunity for registering these new gTLDs from January 2012 to April 2012.

ICANN is restricting registration to those, “established corporations, organizations, or institutions in good standing” with ICANN and are not allowing individuals the opportunity to register for these new gTLDs.

The starting cost of $185,000 as an application fee has brought heavy criticism. Some argue that even among businesses, only those already well-established can afford the heavy price tag.

Criticism has also been levied at ICANN for what is seen as the opening of an internet domain name arms race.

Companies could enter into costly disputes over who retains the rights to register one of the unique gTLDs, since ICANN will sell the rights to the highest bidder when a dispute occurs.

ICANN believes their policy will keep “cyber squatters” from buying up specialized domain names for the specific purpose of selling those off to businesses at an even higher cost.

The decision has also been criticized, not for its restrictions but on the grounds of its alleged usefulness.

Huffington Post blogger Brett Greene commented that these new domain name endings might fall “short of hitting our cognitive radar.”

Concerns also arise that users accustomed to the traditional domain name endings may visit the wrong site once the changes occur, without even realizing their mistake.

Since its founding in 1998, ICANN has approved the steady expansion of standard domain names as part of its responsibility managing domain names.

This expansion however marks the largest single potential increase approved by the organization in both its history and that of the internet.

ICANN also pointed out in its announcement that current domain ending standards would remain in place.

Standards such as .com and .net have grown rapidly to include more internationally inclusive domains like .uk and .it, as well as ones that favor businesses such as .co and .biz.

According to website DomainTools.com, the .com domain ending currently is the most popular option in use, with 95 million .coms currently active and an average of 55,000 bought per day internationally.