The good folks that run the internet naming system have recently approved a measure that would allow any group, with $185,000 and that meets the other standards set for domain name services, to operate whatever top-level domain name (TLD) they wish.  The original TLD's on the internet are .com, .org, and .net.  In more recent years, the list of TLD's had been expanded by a few, for example, .tv was permitted a few years back, and also there are country TLD's that exist as well, such as .ru for Russia.  However, the idea that there can be any other TLD if you can come up with the money to register it is likely to open the floodgates to all sorts of new TLD's, and perhaps trademark infringement/cyber-squatting cases.  Here's a link to the news article:

New TLD

I suppose, as the article suggests, this might also be a way for larger brands, like Apple, to simply operate their own TLD, .apple or .ipad, for example, giving them complete control over all of the sub-domains underneath the TLD.  I also think that this may be a concession to the fact that more and more users of the internet depend on one or more search engines to find websites, rather than relying on typing in the web site URL directly into the web browser.  This development on the internet should be quite interesting to see how it unfolds.