There was an interesting discussion on DNForum the other day about CCTLDs and TLDs. If your not familiar with those terms, CCTLD stands for ‘county code top level domain’ and TLD is just an abbreviation for ‘top level domain.’ The crux of the thread was – which CCTLDs are more popular in their own county than the king of all domains -> .com.
Users chimed in suggesting extenions such as .de, .ru, .co.nz were used much more profilically in their home country. Example, .de is used more in Germany than .com. Others stated that extensions such as .co.uk was around 50% compared to .com.
The general consesus is that .com is a necessity for global and U.S. brands, and the relevant CCTLD rules supreme in most other countries.

