The US Department of Commerce will soon cede control over the names and numbers at the heart of the Internet to a group of global stakeholders. With expanded international oversight for nonprofit ICANN — the organization responsible for maintaining the technical stability of the online world — non-American content and languages other than English are set to gain a broader foothold.

There are now almost 300 million domain names in the world, but just 2 percent are internationalized domain names (IDNs) with non-Roman characters such as Arabic script or the Chinese writing system. For example, Japanese people on the Internet currently access the world’s most popular search engine at google.co.jp. But in the future, Google (based in Mountain View, California) could pivot to use of the domain suffix .グーグル, which it already owns and is pronounced “Guguru” in Japanese.

Supporters say IDNs encourage multilingualism in cyberspace, aid emerging economies and correlate with the actual scripts of Web content. However, universal acceptance may be slow to materialize. Many browsers, email servers and mobile devices are not ready to handle the character complexities. More.