Everyone knows something that sucks. But what if it truly "dot-sucks"?

Soon you'll be able to tell right away in the address bars of the world's browsers thanks to the ".sucks" domain, one of more than 1,400 proposed options for kicking aside ".com" revealed Wednesday by the overseers of the world's website addresses.

None of these new suffixes is available yet. But the announcement by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was the first time the public had a chance to see all the new domain names sought by applicants in what would be the biggest expansion ever of URL real estate. As the number of web addresses registered has exploded, it's become almost impossible to get a .com address that includes anything remotely resembling the English language. Unless you have the money to pay a speculator, or are willing, like so many startups, to drop all your vowels, you're stuck.

New domains have been established in the past one or two at a time (".info" and ".tv" for example), but this is the first time ICANN has taken proposals from all comers, at least those who can afford the $185,000 application fee per name. Google was one of the top applicants, writing checks for 101 domains. Amazon was also in on the action with 76. The most popular name among all applicants was ".app," with 13 bidders, followed by ".home" and ".inc," each with 11. Three applicants are vying to control ".sucks," which will no doubt do wonders for civil discourse on the internet.

One of them is John Berard, CEO of Vox Populi Registry, who thinks companies should want to scoop up ".sucks" domains that include their name as a way to channel consumer vitriol into a venue they can control. "We are hopeful that we can bring into the light of day a legitimate conversation between customers that have a complaint and companies that could benefit from hearing," Berard says.

Berard points to sites like McDonalds Sucks (tag line: "I am hating it") to show that consumers already use URLs to vent about companies. He says that, ironically, many consumers who "like" a company's Facebook page have actually just come there to complain.

If Vox Populi wins control, Berard says they would be vigilant to make sure those with trademark rights get access to their ".sucks" domains. He wouldn't say exactly how much a ".sucks" domain would cost, but the intent appears to price the domains out of the reach of the merely peeved.

"We plan to price the names so that they will not be indiscriminantly registered by speculators," he says. "We're not just going to sprinkle the ground with these names."

To get the chance to sell the name at all, though, he'll have to beat out domain-name juggernaut Donuts Inc., which led with applications for more than 300 top-level domains, including ".sucks". To make that kind of a play, the company had to spend more than $56 million in application fees alone–still far less than the more than $100 million Donuts says it's raised from investors.

Before the new domain names go live, which likely won't be for at least a year, the ICANN evaluation process includes a period when competing applicants are encouraged to work together to reach some kind of agreement. If they can't, the names go to auction. Daniel Schindler, a co-founder of Donuts, says his company intends to win them all, from ".baby" and ".book" to ".tech" and ".vote".

Then the real land grab begins, and not all are convinced it will end well. The Association of National Advertisers believes ICANN hasn't put enough protections in place to prevent squatters from buying up names that should by rights belong to trademark holders and then effectively holding them for ransom. The group has lobbied ICANN and the federal government for the right to low-cost "do not sell" registry for businesses seeking so-called defensive registrations to protect their trademarks.

As potentially hundreds of new domain options come online, there is a separate but related issue of companies having to protect their reputations from less than flattering URLs, says ANA vice president of government relations Dan Jaffe.

Jaffe points to the rush by companies, celebrities and others to buy up domains protectively when ".xxx" became available, not to start adult sites, but to make sure their names didn't get connected to porn.

"That was just one. And there are plenty of others that are sitting here," says Jaffe, noting that applicants have applied for ".porn", ".sex" and ".adult". "If better protections aren't built in, this could be a negative, rather than a positive, step for the internet."