[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.