It was said that in 2009 there would be new top level domains (TLDs) released. ICANN plans to group top level domains. Country Code top level domains will be for a specific country or dependent territory (.us for United States). Sponsored top level domains are for things such as .jobs for human resource managers. ICANN is working on creating top level domains over different languages.

User’s browsing the net on Google’s Chrome will drive massive volumes of traffic to the owners of top level domains. In the Chrome browser, the multi-purpose explorer field is also used as the search field. When a user types the word ‘jobs’ into the search field to perform a Google search, the browser will automatically redirect to .jobs.

Whether Google plans to adjust the search/explore field to accommodate top level domains remains to be seen when the domains are launched and Chrome is launched out of Beta.

Excerpted from here.