Move over .com – it might have to compete with suffixes such as .sex, .app and .fail, after the body in charge of website domain names unveiled some 2,000 applications for new ones, yesterday.

The US-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) revealed details of 1,930 requests for new web address endings, ranging from the general (.shop) to the highly specialised (.motorcycles).

Many of the requests are from large companies such as Apple, Mitsubishi and IBM – with Internet giant Google alone applying for over 100, including .google, .YouTube, and .lol.

“This is a historic day for the Internet and the two billion people around the world that depend on it,” ICANN president and CEO Rod Beckstrom said at a press conference in London unveiling the list. California-based ICANN says the huge expansion of the Internet, with around two billion users around the world, half of them in Asia, means new names are essential.

Just 17 applications for new suffixes were received from African applicants, while 24 requests came from Latin America and the Caribbean. The sought after suffix is .app, with 13 applicants including Google and Amazon. The Vatican has applied for .catholic, while a Turkish company has requested .islam. Four firms have applied for .pizza, six for .baby and three for .basketball.

Mr Beckstrom said ICANN hoped the first of the new suffixes to be live by the first quarter of 2013, but warned that evaluating all of the applications could take around 20 months. “We’re standing at the cusp of a new era of online innovation – innovation that means new businesses, new marketing tools, new jobs, new ways to link communities and share information, he added.