Berlin senate will not support the Berlin domain .berlin

The Berlin senate will not support the TLD .berlin, which is being promoted and planned by the company dotBerlin GmBH. The new TLD is designed to provide a home for Berlin-based companies, associations and citizens of the metropolis. “With the new namespace .berlin we’ll create a regional identity for the Berlin community,” the initiators of the campaign write in English on their homepage. The Mayor of Berlin Klaus Wowereit (Social Democratic Party; SPD) fears that this might lead to an undue blurring of the public and private realms. In his response to a parliamentary question by the parliamentary group of the opposition Free Democratic Party he is, according to the German news agency dpa, said to have stated that the senate did not intend to promote competition to berlin.de, which the senate supports.

The full article in Heise is available here – http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/93776