This paper examines the relationship between extensions in a variety
and general extensions in the category
of associative algebras. Our associative algebras are all unitary, over some fixed commutative ring Λ with identity, but while our discussion will be restricted to this category, it is clear that obvious analogues exist for groups, Lie algebras and Jordan algebras. (We use the notion of a bimultiplication of an associative algebra. In (2), Knopfmacher gives the definition of a bimultiplication in any variety of linear algebras.)