What are the basic differences between the extensions .com and .net,
and are there advantages to one or the other? We want to establish a
new company with the appropriate domain name, and need to know which
extension to use for our web sites (e.g., mynewcompany.com or
mynewcompany.net). Our company will be very interactive and
Web-enabled, so it is important that we drive traffic to the right
place. Thank you

Hi! Thanks for the question.

Generally the meaning associated with the domain names are categorized
as .com for businessess and .net for network organizations and
infrastructure machines. So in your case it should be .com if you are
a for profit entity. Furthermore, .com is more popular than .net.

The following sources provides an explanation on the difference of the
domain name extensions.

".COM is for commercial, for-profit organizations."

".NET is for network infrastructure machines and organizations."

FAQ
http://www.cancon.net/NICfaq.html

"The suffixes assigned to domain names basically differentiate between
the various types of organizations on the World Wide Web. Generally,
the following rules apply: .com -- businesses and commercial
enterprises; .net -- network-related organizations and enterprises;
and, .org -- charitable or non-profit organizations."

"What is the difference between .com, .net, and .org domain names?"
http://www.new-domain-names.biz/faq/what-is-the-difference-between-_com,-_net,-and-_org-domain-names.htm

Our last link meanwhile explains why such naming conventions are not
strictly implemented anymore but more of a preference by the owner who
registers a domain name.

In the past Network Solutions (NSI tried to implement it strictly but
as the number of registrants increased, the process grew cumbersome
and impractical.

"The manual process not only resulted in slow customer service, but
also created several other problems. Registrants, who were dishonest
in describing their organization type, were rewarded with a
registration while those who honestly reported their type of
organization were denied if they did not meet RFC 1591 guidelines.
Also, it became increasingly difficult to clearly define what a
network or nonprofit organization was. The definition of Internet
Service Provider (ISP), which was initially one category that
qualified a company for a .NET name, became increasingly blurred. And
the definition of nonprofit was complicated by the international
nature of the Internet. Moreover, to implement processes to reliably
validate organization types would have been extremely costly and still
not fool proof."

"What is the difference - .com, .org, .net, .biz & .info?"
http://www.domainregister.com/comorg.html 

Search terms used:             
difference .com .net domain
        
I hope these links would help you in your research. Before rating this
answer, please ask for a clarification if you have a question or if 
you would need further information. 
            
Thanks for visiting us.            
            
Regards,            
Easterangel-ga            
Google Answers Researcher

Great

Some advice from a former ISP owner...

Buy all three of the most prevalent TLD (Top Level Domains)
extensions (.com, .net and .org) of the domain name that you
want, then advertise any of the three you want (domian.com,
etc.) to promote, and point all three domain names to your
web site.  Domain names are cheap to buy.

That said, the .com extension is the one that almost all
people will associate with a company doing business on the
net.  Even if you promote the website as domain.net, people
will still type in domain.com anyway.

Unless you are a nonprofict agency, do not promote the domain
name of domaim.org, but get it and point it to the the website
anyway, as this will prevent someone else getting domain.org
and possibly "hijacking" some of your traffic, etc.

Thank you. This extra input was REALLY helpful. I would like to ask a
follow up question to this, and to pay. Am I to do that on a fresh
question?

Hi again 1722-ga! First of all thanks for the nice rating and the tip!

If you plan on asking a new question regarding this topic, I suggest
that you open a new question so that other researchers may also take a
crack at it. But if denco-ga has already answered that question here
in the comment area then no need to do that and you get the
information for free!

Thanks!

Thanks for the comment 1722 (assuming it was directed at me...)!

I am not an "official" Google Answerer though, so as easterangel
points out, you can ask the question and if it is answered through
the comments area (which is the only place a non-google-answerer
can answer the question) by myself (or others) then there is no
need (or way) to pay.  That presumes that it is not answered in
the Answer area though...

hi
though there is difference between .com and .net which u mite have
understood by now,it is better to get .com extension than .net bcos
ppl tend to remember .com more readily than .net.
secondly u need to have great meta tags and accurate keywords( i mean
most common key words used by ordinary ppl) to drive ur site to first
or second pages of search results.
thirdly submit ur site to as many search engines and directories as
possible and dont use diffult to remember site names, and use common
words stating ur business in ur domain name.It really helps!

if u r not satisfied with google researchers help, i am ready to
continue,but for some $'s