Websites will no longer need to use suffixes such as “.com” and “.org,” according to the group that manages Internet addresses, Bloomberg reported.

Requests for new domains, which can include the names of companies or generic domains like “.shop” or “.music,” will be accepted from Jan. 12 to April 12, 2012, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) said in a statement on its website. Users will be able to register domains in any language, it said.

The move would pave the way for domain names to expand beyond the 22 existing top-level ones and may help prevent so-called cybersquatting, the practice of registering domain names and then selling them to trademark owners at a profit, Bloomberg said.

“Today’s decision will usher in a new Internet age,” said Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of ICANN’s board of directors. “We have provided a platform for the next generation of creativity and inspiration.”

Applications will cost $185,000, and the first of these “top level domain names” won’t go live until the end of 2012, said Adrian Kinderis, a member of ICANN’s advisory council.

Canon Inc., Deloitte and Hitachi Ltd. are among companies that have expressed interest in company domain names; generic names will be auctioned to the highest bidders, Kinderis said.

The expansion in domain names may prompt large companies to acquire more Web addresses to keep their brands from being hijacked by others, which costs businesses $746 million, or $500,000 per individual company, according to estimates earlier this year by the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse, an industry group in Washington, D.C., whose members include Wells Fargo & Co., Morgan Stanley and Hewlett-Packard Co.