Inspired by the 2008 predictions ICANN expert Bret Fausett published in this blog for the near-time future at ICANN I would like to add the things the cristall ball showed me at Christmas time when visiting a fortune teller’s office in a small alley in Zurich’s Old Town. There might be happiness and there might be fear in this view but always a grain of thruth:
- Within a decade ICANN will become the world’s second most influential organisation, cannibalising ITU and IGF.
- TLDs will become one of the greatest long tail stories mankind has seen so far, offering choice and diversity for the identity of over a billion domain owners.
- ICANN’s budget will grow to over US$ 1 Billion including contributions from all major countries.
- There will be only one director from the US in the board in 2015.
- ICANN will maintain offices in more than 17 countries, including Bejing, Accra, Riad and Rio.
- Unsure how many ICANN meetings per year there will be, but they will have more than 3.000 participants.
- .com will remain most important TLD marketing itself as „.com unites the world” and running an ODPP (one domain per person) program to support developing countries.
- Vint Cerf will write an autobiography revealing all the secrets of ICANN and Google.