The U.S. government has officially transferred control of the internet address system to an international governing body. The change took place on October 1. What will this mean for internet businesses and users all over the world? To answer that question, it is necessary to consider the history of how the public internet developed. The public internet was still in early development in 1998. That year, the U.S. Department of Commerce took over the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). This not-for-profit organization is located in Los Angeles, California. The U.S. government gave ICANN the authority to oversee domain names for websites and individual IP addresses for internet users. This responsibility included assigning the operators of high-level domains, such as .com and .uk. The contract between the Department of Commerce and ICANN ended on Saturday. This had been planned for a long time. Now a global internet community -- including governments, businesses, technical experts and members of civil society -- oversees ICANN.