By ANICK JESDANUN

| The Associated Press

Washington • Coming soon to the Internet, website addresses that end in ".bank," ".Vegas" and ".Canon."

The organization that oversees the Internet address system is preparing to open the floodgates to a nearly limitless selection of new website suffixes, including ones in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts. That could usher in the most sweeping transformation of the Domain Name System since its creation in the 1980s.

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More than 300 suffixes are available today, the bulk of them country-code domains, such as ".uk" for the United Kingdom and ".de" for Germany.

Hundreds or even thousands more suffixes could be created, categorized by everything from industry to geography to ethnicity.

The Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers will meet Monday in Singapore (Sunday evening in the U.S.) to vote on its expansion plan for domain names. If ICANN approves the plan as expected, new domains could start appearing late next year.

The new system could bring innovative branding opportunities and allow all sorts of niche communities to thrive online.

But businesses worry that they’ll have to grab their brand names before others do. New suffixes could also create confusion as consumers navigate a Web with unfamiliar labels.

It’s also possible that the new names won’t make much difference because many people these days rely on search engines and mobile applications to find what they are looking for online. Consumers don’t type Web addresses into browsers nearly as much as they did 15 years ago when talk of a domain name expansion began.

From a technical standpoint, domain names tell computers on the Internet where to find a website or send an email message. Without them, people would have to remember clunky numerals such as "165.1.59.220" for "ap.org."

The monikers have grown to mean much more, however. Amazon.com Inc. has built its brand on its website address, while bloggers take pride in running sites with their own domain names.

ICANN has already allowed two major expansions of the addressing system. In 2000, it approved seven new domains, including ".info" and ".biz." It began accepting new bids again in 2004. It has approved and added seven from that round, including ".xxx" for pornography sites this past March.

Under the expansion plan now before ICANN, future applications would be streamlined and open to all companies, organizations and individuals.

That has set off a virtual land rush.

A group of entrepreneurs in Las Vegas is vying to operate a ".Vegas" suffix. They have the city’s endorsement and consider ".Vegas" a way to unify local merchants, entertainment venues, residents and even businesses beyond Sin City.

Big business will stake claims, too. Printer and camera maker Canon Inc. plans to apply for ".Canon." Trade groups for bankers and financial-services companies are working together to explore bids for ".bank," ".insure" and ".invest" for their member companies.

New domains offer fresh branding possibilities for companies to identify themselves online in "a more relevant or a more localized" way, said Pat Kane, a senior vice president at VeriSign Inc., which operates ".com" and ".net."

Although suffixes added over the past decade haven’t been as popular as ".com," there has been demand for an expansion because nearly all of the most desirable ".com" addresses have been taken. There are more than 94 million registered under ".com."