Suppose that the Internet had been invented in Thailand, and that every Web address ended with three letters in the Thai alphabet that you needed to type out.Allowing URLs in non-English language formats may spur a new wave of Internet usage, analysts say.In such a scenario, people who speak and read only English (or another language) would be dissuaded from using and exploring the Internet, and creating things on it. Technology leaders from the United States would appeal to some Thai organization in charge of domain names to please allow them to add a few English endings — “.com” perhaps — and then wait patiently for years for it to happen.In reality, of course, the situation is somewhat reversed, and to most English speakers the entire issue is “invisible, incomprehensible, and therefore non-existent — never mind the billions of people who face this problem every day,” says Tan Tin Wee, a professor at the National University of Singapore.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/BUSINESS/11/11/digital.domain/index.html
Internet name frontier may rest in another language
Suppose that the Internet had been invented in Thailand, and that every Web address ended with three letters in the Thai alphabet that you needed to type out. Allowing URLs in non-English language formats may spur a new wave of Internet usage, analysts say.