As the Internet’s population continues to become more global, language barriers are beginning to come down.
This week, Verisign, the registry for domains ending in .com and .net, launched the first internationalized version of .com. It’s in Japanese script, and it looks like this: .??.
Previously, the only way to load a .com website was to type the Latin characters that are common to English, French, Spanish and German speakers but unfamiliar to billions of people around the globe. Approximately 45% of all websites in the world are in a language other than English, according to W3Tech.
Since most countries in Asia have very low to moderate proficiency in English, users may not be able to find their way to a website simply because they are unable to enter a domain name.
“By enabling more end users to navigate the Internet in scripts representing their native language, and giving more companies the ability to maintain a common brand identity across many scripts, Internationalized Domain Names have the potential to make the Internet more accessible and thus more usable,” said Manish Dalal, vice president of Verisign Naming Services Asia, in a statement.
Verisign launched a rollout for the Japanese script starting Wednesday. By May 2016, it will be available to the general public.
The company is introducing .com and .net in 11 languages over the coming months, allowing people to access the Internet in their own native script.
