The Difference Between .net and .com

Originally the difference between .net and .com was meant to distinguish between a business (.com), a charity/non-profit (.org.), or a technology based company (.net). However, with the great explosion of the Internet and the worldwide use of the Internet for companies and individuals, the lines became blurred between the two. Individuals as well as companies have started cross registering domains and now it seems the top level domains can be used for any purpose. Generally there really seems to not be much difference between the two domains. Normally, however, .com’s are used for commercial organizations and .net’s are used for about anything. Depending on which domain you use, some hosts do make available different features.

Keeping a division between the domains was easily followed before the volume for registration requests became so large. The division was accomplished manually, resulting in slow customer service. Sometimes registrants were dishonest in their description of their organization type and it became increasingly difficult to define what was .com or .net. It was very difficult to tell which category a qualified company belonged in. The cost would have been extremely escalated to accurately implement the validation process for each organization, making application for registration.

It is now left up to the registrants to choose the correct category and properly register their domain. Therefore, the lines have become blurred. There is, however, a user-friendly format for anyone to search for a desired available domain name and become registered as such. So to summarize, .com is a commercial website and .net is a communications site.