HTML Help: New Top Level Domains

My opinion?

They are not top level domains, they are not even legitimate domains. Furthermore, there are problems with this scheme that make them absolutely undesirable.

For one thing, normal surfers won't be able to find your site. Your site can only be found by subscribers to one of their partner ISP's unless a surfer downloads and installs and uses a special browser plugin.

Most surfers won't belong to these special ISP's, and we all know how unlikely it is that someone will download a special plugin just to view your site . . . even IF they knew it was there!

Another problem is—what's to stop another company from coming along and duplicate New.net’s offerings. They could then sell your exact same domain name to someone else. Surfer’s with the right plugin would see your site, but surfer’s who installed the other companies plugin would see the site registered through them. Talk about an identity crisis!

Then there's the issue of search engines. New.net has been selling these pseudo-domains for at least eight years . . . have you ever seen one of these pseudo-domains listed in any search engine?

You haven't, and you won't, because they are not accredited domains. Search engines aren't going to index pseudo-domains. Save your time, save your money.