If the company is Hispandering, it’s also mompandering and corporationpandering.
New top level domain name registries offering regional, niche, or cultural domains, take note: the people you’re targeting might take it the wrong way.
That’s apparently the case with .soy. Google’s new domain name isn’t targeted to yuppies who don’t like cow’s milk. It’s targeted to the Hispanic community. “Soy” is Spanish for “I am”.
But some people in the community think the effort is misguided. That, or they needed something to write about this past week when .soy came across their desk.
A Fox News Latino article aks “Google’s new .SOY domain: Code for segregation or source of Latino pride?”. It says Google should just hire more Hispanics rather than offering them a new top level domain name on the web.
This article in RedEye Chicago says Google is “Hispandering to a special level”.
Apparently .com and .net weren’t big enough for everyone, so Google decided to create a separate area of the Internet for Latinos to listen to salsa music, share enchilada recipes and do whatever else Latinos do…
…Latinos aren’t asking to be treated differently; quite the contrary, we’re simply asking to be treated the same. Latinos don’t want their own special corner of the Internet.
And a handful of people on Twitter said Google was segregating Latinos.
Wait. What?
Tell that to the LGBTQ “community”, which is pissed off at ICANN for not handing it its own place on the web with .gay.
If the Hispanic community thinks Google is pandering to them, they’re going to be really miffed to find out that Google and other companies are “pandering” to the Japanese (.みんな – everyone), moms (.mom) and corporations (.inc).
They’ll be surprised to find out that Hotels (successfully) argued that they should have their own home on the web. So did the “eco” community, which apparently doesn’t include people like me who just like to recycle.
I bet the people of New York are upset that they’re being “segregated” online with the new .nyc domain name.
Apparently controversy can be good, however. Google’s .soy video (below) has been viewed over 600,000 times, making it the most popular new TLD video to date. About 1 in 450 of them have purchased a .soy domain (it has 1,308 names in the zone).
couponpages says
Here’s the strange twist. You can’t register .Soy domains on Google Domains.
I’ve been trying for days. It says “Sorry, soy domains are not currently available through Google”
Andrew Allemann says
Here’s a question: Have you found a way to log in to Google domains other than first logging in to your Google account and then going to the Google Domains site? I can’t find a way to log in directly from the Google Domains site.
couponpages says
No. That’s pretty much the Google way to do things. It’s also how you get to things like Webmaster Tools, AdSense and Adwords. Most of the times, I just go to Google, then search for Google Domains. The direct URL is actually Domains.Google.Com, but I think Google.Com/Domains works too.
This is one reason I don’t see Google as being a threat in any business to consumer business. They clearly are not actually interested in the ins and outs of doing business directly with consumers.
The fact that Google Domains doesn’t have most of the new TLDs was strange… but not selling their own TLDs is even more of a mystery.
John Berryhill says
“…for Latinos to listen to salsa music, share enchilada recipes and do whatever else Latinos do.”
The merits of newGTLD’s aside, what a breathtakingly ignorant thing to say.
Spanish is the most widely spoken language in the world. The author of the piece apparently believes it is a language only spoken by persons in the US (and Spanish has been spoken in what is now the US longer than English has).
“As a Latino, I’m used to being pandered to.”
But as an American, the author has apparently become as culturally narrowminded as much of the rest of the country. I don’t think people in Spain, for example, consider use of the Spanish language to be some form of “pandering”. To believe use of the Spanish language on a global computer network is necessarily directed to US Latinos takes normal US-centric thinking to a whole new level.
ChuckWagen says
You of all people should have detected the sarcasm.
ChuckWagen says
(But don’t get me wrong, the author comes across as a complete idiot, whiner and blowhard.)
Gerardo Aristizabal says
What amuses me is that they did the video in English. Really?
Joseph Peterson says
What makes .SOY a story is that so many bloggers and media folks enjoy talking about Google.
.UNO has been discussed in English y en español before this (and I’ve overheard a similarly sarcastic reaction here and there). But headlines involving Google always get much more circulation.
Really, the media has only about 4 or 5 sock puppets through which to discuss cultural goings on here in the USA. Sometimes it’s the Obama sock puppet. Sometimes it’s the Celebrity Gossip sock puppet. Sometimes the Muslim Terrorist sock puppet. Sometimes the Google / Facebook / Twitter sock puppet. Nothing is newsworthy until it can be placed in the mouth of one of these. If something like “Hispandering” deserves to be discussed (and it does), then it must wait until a sock puppet can be found with utterances to object to.
@Andrew,
I’m sure you did not mean to imply a direct video-to-registration conversion rate when you said “About 1 in 450 of them have purchased a .soy domain”. Somebody might misunderstand that. It’s just a comparison of high views and relatively low registration numbers without a causal relationship, right?
Andrew Allemann says
“It’s just a comparison of high views and relatively low registration numbers without a causal relationship, right?”
exactly
Kassey says
Some people want to stay in their own circle but most want to be part of the global community.