[10] Originally headquartered in Marina del Rey in the same building as the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute (ISI), its offices are now in the Playa Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Before the establishment of ICANN, the IANA function of administering registries of Internet protocol identifiers (including the distributing top-level domains and IP addresses) was performed by Jon Postel, a computer science researcher who had been involved in the creation of ARPANET, first at UCLA and then at USC-ISI.

[14] As the Internet grew and expanded globally, the U.S. Department of Commerce initiated a process to establish a new organization to perform the IANA functions.

On January 30, 1998, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, issued for comment, "A Proposal to Improve the Technical Management of Internet Names and Addresses."

The proposed rule making, or "Green Paper",[15] was published in the Federal Register on February 20, 1998, providing opportunity for public comment.

[18] ICANN managed the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) under contract to the United States Department of Commerce (DOC) and pursuant to an agreement with the IETF.

ICANN formerly operated from the same Marina del Rey building where Postel formerly worked, which is home to an office of the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California.

[30][31] In July 2008, the DOC reiterated an earlier statement[32] that it has "no plans to transition management of the authoritative root zone file to ICANN".

[38][39] In 2000, professor Michael Froomkin of the University of Miami School of Law argued that ICANN's relationship with the U.S. Department of Commerce is illegal, in violation of either the Constitution or federal statutes.

[42] During September and October 2003, ICANN played a crucial role in the conflict over VeriSign's "wild card" DNS service Site Finder.

After an open letter from ICANN issuing an ultimatum to VeriSign, later endorsed by the Internet Architecture Board,[43] the company voluntarily ended the service on October 4, 2003.

"[49] This was largely in response to a report issued by KnujOn, called "The 10 Worst Registrars" in terms of spam advertised junk product sites and compliance failure.

These same registrars were also most frequently cited by KnujOn as failing to resolve complaints made through the Whois Data Problem Reporting System (WDPRS).

On June 26, 2008, the ICANN Board started a new process of TLD naming policy to take a "significant step forward on the introduction of new generic top-level domains."

In 2010, ICANN approved a major review of its policies with respect to accountability, transparency, and public participation by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

[61][62] During December 2011, the Federal Trade Commission stated ICANN had long failed to provide safeguards that protect consumers from online swindlers.

[65] On October 1, 2016, ICANN ended its contract with the United States Department of Commerce National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and entered the private sector.

It is managed by a 16-member board of directors composed of eight members selected by a nominating committee on which all the constituencies of ICANN are represented; six representatives of its Supporting Organizations, sub-groups that deal with specific sections of the policies under ICANN's purview; an at-large seat filled by an at-large organization; and the president / CEO, appointed by the board.

[74] In addition the following organizations are GAC Observers:[75] As the operator of the IANA domain name functions, ICANN is responsible for the DNSSEC management of the root zone.

However, the attempts that ICANN has made to establish an organizational structure that would allow wide input from the global Internet community did not produce results amenable to the current Board.

[79] During the early 2000s, there had been speculation that the United Nations might assume control of ICANN,[80] followed by a negative reaction from the U.S. government[32] and worries about a division of the Internet.

In 2013, the initial report of ICANN's Expert Working Group has recommended that the present form of Whois, a utility that allows anyone to know who has registered a domain name on the Internet, should be "abandoned".

[citation needed] One controversial proposal, resulting from a September 2011 summit between India, Brazil, and South Africa (IBSA), would seek to move Internet governance into a "UN Committee on Internet-Related Policy" (UN-CIRP).

[95][98][99] The Obama administration that had joined critics of ICANN during 2011[100] announced in March 2014 that they intended to transition away from oversight of the IANA functions contract.

The current contract that the United States Department of Commerce has with ICANN expired in 2015, in its place the NTIA will transition oversight of the IANA functions to the 'global multistakeholder community'.

[112] As of September 2014, this group, the Coalition for Responsible Internet Domain Oversight, that opposes the rollout of ICANN's TLD expansion program, has been joined by 102 associations and 79 major companies.

ICANN has received more than $60 million from gTLD auctions,[114] and has accepted the controversial domain name ".sucks" (referring to the primarily US slang for being inferior or objectionable).

[121] Jay Rockefeller says that .sucks is "a predatory shakedown scheme" and "Approving '.sucks', a gTLD with little or no public interest value, will have the effect of undermining the credibility ICANN has slowly been building with skeptical stakeholders.

[123] In April 2019, ICANN proposed an end to the price cap of org domains[124] and effectively removed it in July in spite of having received 3,252 opposing comments and only six in favor.

[126] In May 2019, ICANN decided in favor of granting exclusive administration rights to amazon.com for the .amazon gTLD after a 7 year long dispute with the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO).