tuesday ushered in a series of generic top-level domains (gTLDs) that for the first time in Web history, include Arabic, Chinese and Russian characters.

The new gTLDs -- which are the suffixes to Web addresses, such as ".com" and ".net" -- were approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN.

ICANN invited applications for new domain names in 2012, at a cost of US$185,000 a pop. This raised a few mini-controversies: a cohort of Latin American countries objected to Amazon's application for .amazon; other groups opposed suffixes such as ".islam" or ".casino."

ICANN nonetheless has plowed ahead with the rollout. New domains unveiled Tuesday include the Arabic word for "network"; the Chinese word for "game"; and the Russian words for "online" and "site."