'What Is Icann? (Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune) The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a nonprofit, public-private partnership responsible for coordinating the Internet's system of domain names. Set up in California under the auspices of the U.S. Commerce Department, it oversees the system that matches addresses such as "startribune.com" with numerical addresses that make sense to computers. It is not the only body