Story by
Kaylene Hong
Kaylene Hong was Asia Reporter for The Next Web between 2013 and 2014, based in Singapore. She is bilingual in English and Mandarin. Stay in Kaylene Hong was Asia Reporter for The Next Web between 2013 and 2014, based in Singapore. She is bilingual in English and Mandarin. Stay in touch via Twitter or Google+.
Domain names tend to be predictable — more than half of all website addresses end with .com, while other common ones include .net, .org and .gov.
Google is, however, bringing more diversity as it announced that starting today, you can register for a domain name using .みんな (minna, “mee-n-nuh”), the first open top-level domain in hiragana, a type of Japanese character. It is the first general top-level domain, or gTLD, that the Internet giant is able to offer — and it has teamed up with several registrar partners to do so.
“We hope that .みんな will make it easier for Japanese people and companies to create more recognizable website names that better suit their businesses or personalities and are easier to understand and remember in Japanese,” Google says.
➤ .みんな is now available for みんな (everyone) [Google Asia-Pacific Blog]
Image via Gerald Ford / Flickr, thumbnail image via Atsushi Tomura/Getty Images
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