Large companies such as New York Life Insurance and Verzion Communications are protesting against the new personal extensions. They fear that these extensions will offer a new possibility to Internet fraude.
The companies find themselves in a difficult situation. One possibility is that they don’t care about the launch of the new extensions. If they do this, they take the risk that their name is registred under a new extensions by someone with bad intentions. Another possibility is that they register some of the new personal extensions such as .nyc, .bank, .hotel,.. but this will cost lots of money.
According to many people this protest is a typical example of much ado about nothing. Most of the people think that .com is and will remain the most important extension. ‘If people want to find the website of an large company, they’ll always search first under the .com extension,’ says Mr Hittel rom New York Life. ‘Besides,’ he adds, ‘we’ve seen this protest before when .asia and .eu were released. Those extensions haven’t caused the expected problems either.’