Webwork - 1:32 pm on Aug 10, 2006 (gmt 0)

It all makes sense: .cn, .in will rise up to supplant .com - up to the point where .us begins to stake out some ground as the country centric ccTLD for local business interests - at which point we may come full circle to the originally envisioned, global top level domain roles of the gTLDs.

You know the original vision. The one where gTLDs were meant to address global audiences, not parochial / national / regional audiences.

The wheel turns. Opinions about the future are more than grist for the mill. The millstone of time may prove that the original structure of the WWW - which has lead to many non-US companies adopting .com simply by virtue of .com being "the choice" - in the end is also the reason why, over time, .com will maintain its dominance as the default address: check .com first, use it if it's available, lose something to your competition if you have the same root name but not the .com address.

Another variable: Due to the intentional and historical internationalization of .com it is likely that search engines will treat .com based URLs a bit differently than ccTLDs.