Microsoft announces support for Chinese domain names, ushering in an era of barrier-free Chinese internet access.

Shanghai Morning Post (Reporter Zhang Liming) - The global software giant Microsoft recently announced that following the support of Chinese .CN domains by IE7, Microsoft will further provide comprehensive support for Chinese .CN domains at the Windows operating platform level. This means that the promotion of Chinese .CN domains will achieve a major breakthrough, and accessing the internet in Chinese is entering an "obstacle-free era."

Microsoft made the announcement during the recently concluded ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) conference in Morocco. Microsoft representative Michel Suignard explicitly stated that Microsoft would promote the application of multilingual domains such as Chinese .CN from the operating platform level, not just limited to IE browser and OUTLOOK. In other words, all future Windows operating systems like WinXP and Vista, as well as foundational software, will fully support Chinese .CN.

As the highest authority body of the international internet, ICANN clearly expressed at the Morocco conference its intention to introduce feasible solutions to comprehensively and rapidly advance the development of multilingual domains including Chinese .CN, and announced the timeline for promoting the application of multilingual domains such as Chinese .CN.

Microsoft has shown strong interest in this decision. Michel Suignard claimed, "Microsoft's ultimate goal is to enable other types of browsers to also support the normal application of multilingual domains like Chinese .CN through Microsoft's platform or services."