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
