Is one of the greatest disasters in the history of the Internet beginning?

Introduction of new top-level domain names began yesterday, and Business Insider believes it is "one of the greatest disasters in the history of the Internet."

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, which oversees the whole domain-name system, unveiled all the applications it had received at a press event in London on June 13. Everyone from Google to Go Daddy is applying for new strings like ".lol" and ".casa." Brands like BMW and Canon are angling to secure ".bmw" and ".canon," which will let them run websites that don't end in ".com."

That's the problem with this whole scheme, Business Insider writes. Namely, after years of TV and radio ads touting Web addresses, consumers are somewhat familiar with strings like ".com" and ".net." Those pretty much define Web addresses in the popular imagination. We cannot expect people to understand that, say, "cars.bmw" is some kind of thing you can type into a Web browser and get to BMW's website, Business Insider comments and adds that all this is going to accomplish is to pour a lot of money into ICANN's hands—new top-level domains cost as much as $185,000 to start up—and confuse the heck out of consumers.

Marketing chiefs everywhere are going to be in a panic trying to figure out if they need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to register their brand name as a string, just to keep it out of mischief-makers' hands. Outside of a few global brands, most won't be able to afford that kind of expense. Meanwhile, Google, Facebook, and Twitter are going to make out like bandits. Why? Because anything that makes Web addresses even more confusing than they already are drives people to type things into a search box, Business Insider concludes.