WebProNews

The Internet added 24 million new domain names in 2008, according to the fourth quarter 2008 Domain Name Industry Brief by VeriSign.

The year ended with a total of 177 million domain name registrations across all of the Top Level Domains (TLDs). This represents 16 percent growth over the previous year. In the fourth quarter, more than 10.1 million new domain names were registered across all TLDs.

The five largest TLDs in terms of size were .com, .cn (China), .de (Germany), .net, and .org.

The overall base of .com and .net domain names grew to 90.4 million at the end of 2008. This is a 12 percent increase over the previous year and a one percent increase over the third quarter of 2008.

VeriSign says it is working to provide a way for people of all languages to navigate the Internet.  It supports Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) that use local language characters to represent a domain name.

"The potential for internationalized TLDs to enable a universally accessible Internet is promising," said Jill McNabb, vice president, Naming Services at VeriSign.

"But it must be done right. A careless or rushed approach will expose the community to a high risk of failure over technical and business issues. VeriSign is committed to working with ICANN and others to achieve a safe, consistent and ubiquitous user experience, while protecting company brands and their customers around the world."