Global by Design

ICANN shed some light on its fast-track application process today, announcing the first four countries to pass the string evaluation of the process.

Here they are:

• Saudi Arabia (SA): السعودية
• Egypt (EG): مصر
• United Arab Emirates (AE): امارات
• Russian Federation (RU): рф

I’m surprised to see China absent from this list. But there are 12 other requests behind these four.

I know it’s way too early to start predicting the rise of the Arabic-language Internet, but it’s exciting to see such interest in the Middle East.

Here’s the ICANN press release.

• Where is China’s fast-track IDN?
• IDNs get on the fast track
• IDNs become a presidential issue
• IDN application update: Egypt, Russia, China…
• Multilingual Domain Names Redux
• The coming gTLD explosion (or not)