[tifkap]

It's not a thing anymore, for two reasons:

1, It used to be that the only 'real' domain name was .com. Nowadays this artificial scarecity is over. If you want to launch a service as foo.io, that is fine.

2, You can sue to have a domain name confiscated if you own the trademark with the same name

https://cyber.harvard.edu/property00/domain/CaseLaw.html

[newdude116]

1. not. Sure. Hey. website.io is cool now. .ly too. But you don't know how long the rules will last. They may insist you must open a company in this jurisdiction!

2, "You can sue to have a domain name confiscated if you own the trademark with the same name"

Yes sure. What do you know about trademark law and English common law? A few hints: trademarks are granted for classes and a trademark in another class or another jurisdiction would buy you nothing. lets take sampleword.com

A trademark for sampleword for delivering consulting services would not prevent me from running a shoe shop under this domain. Or a trademark in the US would not prevent me from using in in another country. Country specific domains may offer some protection here but not for .com .net

[Y_Y]

Nobody is going to ask you to open a company in the British Indian Ocean Territory. In fact I think the people involved would rather you forgot all about it.

[newdude116]

You don't know that. Rules can change. Would be a great way to bring money in.

[slivanes]

Not sure if article said it, but you'll need to have trademarked your name prior to the domain registration date.

[rcruzeiro]

Do you have a source for that? I've been researching this but I got conflicting information.

[slivanes]

https://domainnamewire.com/category/policy-law/

Should be enough examples and info there.

[cushychicken]

The .com domain still carries a lot of legitimate weight. I don't have the source handy but I read somewhere circa 2017 that 25% of all internet traffic is still direct navigation to .com domains. The corollary was that if someone was searching for a thing (say, "toilet seats"), there's still a sizable chunk of people who'd just type "toiletseats.com" into their browser and buy from whatever vendor pops up.

[defaultname]

.com is still preferable if you ever communicate a domain name in a manner where people will type it directly in. If you put an ad on a bus or on TV that says easymoney.io, for example, a large percentage of people will go to easymoney.com in their browser.

If you ever see the copious ads for "free to play, no money" gambling sites during sports events or live broadcasts, and wonder how free-to-play gaming makes enough money for that to be worthwhile, note that the TLD they use for their free version will always be a non-.com TLD, but if you just replace that TLD with .com you'll be met with a full gambling site. One that would be illegal to advertise, and often operate, in the jurisdiction where you're seeing the free to play ads. It isn't accidental.