According to a story out in FoxNews.com, Google’s recent announcement of its new .SOY domain, meant to appeal to Latinos, has drawn criticism and jest from a number of places.
.Soy (Spanish for “I am”) according to Google “offers Hispanic consumers, brands and publishers “a place to build, create and share culturally relevant Web content.”
“A number of Latino organizations, including the Hispanic Heritage Fund and Ella Institute, have switch over to the .soy domain name, but some media critics have asked the question of why the tech giant has created a space that segregates Latinos online.”
“If Google really wants to reach Latinos in a meaningful way, .soy probably isn’t the answer,” Alanna Nuñez of Cosmopolitan magazine wrote. “Why doesn’t Google (I’m looking at you too, Apple and Intel, both of whom have also come under fire for a lack of diversity) examine its own hiring practices? “
“Some say this disconnect between the tech world and the Hispanic community has now translated into the. SOY domain that is being called out as segregation.”
“How can a company based in parts of the United States where the overwhelming majority of the country’s 50 million Latinos live, be so border-walled off from the physical, geographic and cultural reality just outside its gates, so self-absorbed in the virtual world where it is king?” Roberto Lovato, a Visiting Scholar at the University of California-Berkeley’s Center for Latino Policy Research wrote for Latino Rebels. “Another equally pointed question has to do with us, specifically with where and how Latinos relate to the Digital Darwinism that is (again) shuffling and redefining the social and economic positions of Latinos and us all.”
The article did not mention the .Uno new gTLD, which is another extension that is geared to the Latin community which has been out for many months now and has 7 times the registrations as .Soy.
.Soy has less than 1,100 registrations.
.Uno has more than 7,300 registrations
You know, the article is right, it is, at a minimum, a form of Balkanization of the internet, and possibly segregation as well.
This is the type of criticism that will stick, and could cause giant organizations such as Google to dump the whole idea; already you can see the reluctance as relatively tiny outfits beat them in the auctions; there’s probably more cash in Google’s tip jar in their coffee room than some of the guys that whoop them in the ICANN’s new gTLD auctions.
– And I’m talking about all the money the auction winners have in the bank
It stands for Soy Sauce, not Spanish Soy. Chill.
http://icannwiki.com/.soy
Top Ten in the list of ‘stupidest’ comments made so far in regards to the New
G ood
T o
L ose
D inero
s*
Spanish speaking people at large had no clue nor interest for domains PERIOD general speaking and for the most part Spanish speaking domainers are staying far awy from this crappola.
(* not sure who came out this beautiful scramble but it wasn’t me)