Summary
As per a recent meeting in Seoul,S.Korea and ICANN's (Internet Corp. for Assigned Numbers and Names ) decision to allow users to choose full web and e-mail addresses using non-Latin character sets means the end of a TRULY world wide web and not the beginning!!
It will most certainly lead to further defragmentation of the WWW and all that implies in terms of globally accepted standards and policies re content,security,best practices industrywide as well as interoperability of products/devices.
Analysis
1. ICANN's (Internet Corp. for Assigned Numbers and Names ) decision to allow users to choose full web and e-mail addresses using non-Latin character sets may not sound revolutionary,but it implies use of Chinese,Arabic,Japanese and Russian character sets for example to identify websites and their contents.
It really means end of an era where content can be truly global in nature in the sense anybody in the world can access and use it; using common medium of a language - English. Use of foreign languages immediately implies that the content and also the search would only be accessible and meaningfully understood by those who understand the languages/scripts. This most definitely means defragmentation and eventual segregation of web content in different parts of the world.
2.Interoperability of many devices ( such as smart-phones - Apple's iPhone ) which rely upon a common international standards re operating software,content,security and communicability could no longer be taken for granted .
Can you imagine receiving an SMS on the mobile from a Chinese/Japanese source in Chinese ( who do not know who the recipients globally are) or do a GOOGLE search which may/may not pickup a website in Japanese whose content and address is partially/totally in Japanese or Korean?? How would you evaluate whether the SMS is fraudulent or the website is hacked or not?
- see my analysis dated 10/19/2009 titled "Google's Android's popularity could be its major downfall"
3. ICANN or other service providers would no longer be able to enforce any globally acceptable industry wide standards and policies re hacking/fraud eg, by the sheer fact that it would not be able to monitor the addressing standards/content of websites/e-mails given the languages/scripts in use- whose multiplicity is bound to increase given that there are at least 200-300 major languages and scripts in the world.
Furthermore,the sheer volume of websites is bound to explode from already a staggering 1 trillion currently!! This means that there are world wide 800-1000 websites per every inhabitant on the earth!!- 80% do not even have a computer or access to one!!
This does imply a lot of junk content floating around on the WWW and bound to get worse!! Search engines risk being not truly global in efforts to reduce inefficiency in search due to sheer volume of irrelevant selected content.They may be tempted to drop content or refine their search based on language/script and other presumed criteria !!
4. It also increases the risk of fraud ( which is rampant already) because the content and security of sites would be practically impossible to monitor and prevent fraudulent/illegal usage/content because of language/script problems for the average internet user not to mention professional business users who have limits to their resources for hackers as well.
5. Lastly,but not the least ;it most certainly implies great increase in efforts/resources for serious global players who want to sell their products worldwide ( e.g. Google Inc. or Palm Inc. or Motorola Inc., Nokia OYJ or Sprint Nextel Corp. ) or global media groups ( such as BBC Ltd., Time Warner Group ( CNN ) Inc. etc. ) who disseminate information/news content daily, because they will have to maintain multilingual sites in 20 languages/scripts or loose their clients to other local providers of products/services in their languages/scripts!!
