[byuu]

I suspect if there was a flat gTLD with no suffixes, everyone would have domain names that looked more like AOL screen names (lots of numbers after the names.)

I'm okay with a few TLDs, but the original distinction is kind of vague. There's really no distinguishing characteristics between .com and .net, and even though for some reason .org became popular with open source, a lot of OSS sites (including mine) are not organizations. If not for Google, .dev would have been a great one for developer sites.

What I don't like is the idea of adding an infinite number of gTLDs. It's bound to do nasty things: break a bunch of old URL matching regular expressions, collide with some poor businesses that made bad choices for their internal networks, etc.

[JoshTriplett]

> I suspect if there was a flat gTLD with no suffixes, everyone would have domain names that looked more like AOL screen names (lots of numbers after the names.)

I don't tend to see lots of numbers in domain names today, even in popular TLDs like .com.

[byuu]

Because there are alternatives. You can grab foo.(net,org,io,country-code,etc) if foo.com is already taken.

[tom-lord]

That was the whole point in theory, yes. But in reality, almost all new gTLD registrations are being made as brand protection, and redirecting to the company's existing .com domain. Only a very small minority of websites are trying to build a brand on a new gTLD domain name.