The US government has ceded control of the technical management of the internet, in what has been called the “most significant change in the internet's functioning for a generation”.

Following a long legal battle, the California-based NGO Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will gain control over the organisation of unique online identifiers.

The change will not affect ordinary internet users but is a reflection of the rapidly shifting online landscape and attitudes to it.

ICANN manages the database for top-level domain names such as .com and .net and the corresponding numeric addresses that allow computers to connect.

The group’s work will be governed by a collection of academics, technical experts, private industry and government representatives, public interest advocates and individual users around the world.

“This transition was envisioned 18 years ago, yet it was the tireless work of the global internet community, which drafted the final proposal, that made this a reality,” said ICANN Board Chair Stephen D Crocker.

“This community validated the multi stakeholder model of internet governance. It has shown that a governance model defined by the inclusion of all voices, including business, academics, technical experts, civil society, governments and many others is the best way to assure that the internet of tomorrow remains as free, open and accessible as the internet of today.”

IT journal The Register said it was a “historic moment” and the “most significant change in the internet's functioning for a generation”.

7 people who helped create the internet and don’t get any credit Show all 7 1 /7 7 people who helped create the internet and don’t get any credit 7 people who helped create the internet and don’t get any credit Claude Shannon (1916-2001) Shannon took the work done by Boole and re-purposes it for computers, allowing us to understand how to share information with the. It begun “information theory” — a system of thought that would let us build the internet Getty 7 people who helped create the internet and don’t get any credit Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) The internet now is largely algorithms: formulas or procedures that computers can run to solve problems. Those are so deeply integrated into our world that they are almost invisible. But Lovelace created the first one, in the early 19th century, helping lay the groundwork for the machine learning and artificial intelligence that now runs the internet Getty 7 people who helped create the internet and don’t get any credit George Boole (1815-1864) Boole helped formulate the kind of logic that would allow the internet and the binary that powers it to flourish. The structures of thinking that he proposed would eventually come to allow computers to understand us, and power the search engines that we use to get around the internet Getty 7 people who helped create the internet and don’t get any credit Leonard Kleinrock (1934-) Kleinrock helped formulate the idea of packet switching, a central part of the way that computers are able to share information with each other over networks. The theoretical frameworks that he proposed would eventually become the same technology that allows almost every computer in the world to send and receive information from the internet Getty 7 people who helped create the internet and don’t get any credit Vint Cerf (1943-) and Robert Kahn (1938-) Together Cerf and Kahn helped invent the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP). Those two technologies decide how computers communicate each other — in essence creating the internet as we know it Getty 7 people who helped create the internet and don’t get any credit Ray Tomlinson (1941-) Life online wouldn’t be what it is today without email. Tomlinson created a system to allow people to send messages to each other over ARPANET Andreu Veà 7 people who helped create the internet and don’t get any credit Larry Roberts (1937-) Larry Roberts helped create ARPANET, a military network that helped uncover and prove many of the technologies that would go on to power the internet. While Tim Berners-Lee often gets hailed for creating the web, Roberts also contributed to the early work that went into helping him Michel Bakni

Ed Black, chief executive of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, said the transfer was "a symbolic, but important step in preserving the stability and openness of the internet, which impacts free speech, our economy and our national security."

The US government has been the primary manager of the internet's address book since 1988 largely because it was invented in the country.

Critics of the handover have attempted to block or delay it on grounds it could jeopardize free speech online, claims that the Obama administration and technology companies have said lack merit.

Federal officials began discussing a plan to move ICANN under international oversight in the 1990s, and rolled out a formal plan in March 2014.

But conservative politicians, including former Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, tried to stop the move, saying it was unconstitutional and required congressional approval.

Mr Cruz called the transfer a "giveaway to Russia" and other governments, but his effort failed to gain traction.

A delay would have backfired by undermining US credibility in international negotiations over internet standards and security, the Obama administration and technical experts have said.