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If large companies have the extra cash to drop extending their online identities in this very small way, then there's really no harm to the broader eco-system of domains.

There will likely be a few "fun" uses of this, say drink.coke, but coke.com will still remain the far more compelling implementation and their own personal TLDs will simply become presences that offer little practical benefits, but were bought simply because they were there -- and the press coverage that the purchase may achieve may in fact just garner equal to or more than the $185,000 they originally spent.

Overall, this will likely just be a small boon for the kind of consultancy firms mentioned in the original article: but it will offer little in the way of actual affects to the rest of us.