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.biz was one of the seven new top-level domains (TLDs) ratified back in November 2000 - the others being .info, .name, .pro, .museum, .aero and .coop. The general idea is to help bring greater clarity to the cluttered namespaces of .com and .net.

Neulevel is the exclusive registry operator for the .biz domain, which means it takes a commission for every company that wants to be recorded in its database of official .biz addresses (it seems that more than 160,000 .biz domain names have been pre-registered). Don't confuse the registry itself with a registrar, however. A number of '.biz accredited' companies work with Neulevel as

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official registrars that will deal with end-users with .biz requests.

'In many ways, the Internet today is like the wild, wild west. It was never designed for commercial use,' believes Douglas B. Armentrout, the CEO of NeuLevel. '.biz is where business will be conducted in the future because it has what the business community needs: superior technology, better security and a platform to facilitate the business transactions of the future. This isn't just the future of the Internet; this is the future of business.' Steady on, sir. But undoubtedly .biz will prove to be one of the most lucrative domains to be awarded by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).

The functions carried out by ICANN were once performed by the US Government itself, and the introduction of a commercial element to this enterprise has not always been welcomed by the wider Internet community. The process of awarding potentially lucrative domain names to commercial registry operators particularly attracted criticism. So indeed, the introduction of .biz does reflect a further attempt to commercialise the web.

Suitably enough, Neulevel has .biz version of its site. You can visit it here.