Vinton Cerf, former MCI official, current Google advisor and chairman of the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), will be leaving his position at ICANN later this week when his seven-year term is up. Giving people credit for inventing the Internet is so 1990s, and you could certainly say that the Internet continues to be re-invented--as a video platform, social network, a telepresence vehicle--on a frequent basis, but Cerf was among a number of people who did key early work that led to the Internet and e-mail as we know them.
During Cerf's tenure, ICANN has been criticized for not moving fast enough to make more domain name variations available, and for not enabling more domain names in languages other than English. Many people also have complained that the United States, primarily through ICANN, has too much control over the domain management process for what has become a truly global Internet.
For more:
- The Seattle Times has the Associated Press article