.com has become the de-facto default TLD for the net for better or worse.

Maybe the default for businesses, but not countries. Canada.com -> Not government owned USA.com -> not government owned Germany.com -> not government owned

Just some quick ones I checked, but you get the gist.

As a Sweden .se is the de-facto domain for everything specific to Sweden.

I.e. see http://sweden.com/ vs http://sweden.se/

Or http://www.skatteverket.se/ vs http://www.skatteverket.com/ for that matter.

From my experience .com is the de-facto domain for international commercial entities. For my personal domain I use hultner.se

somewhat disagree, hipster companies use .io for example

doing as hipsters do, specifically avoiding the norm/default.

a perfect example of the exception proving the rule, i think

This is the interesting thing. If it had been france.us - would the policy be different? .com is a special case, as if a number existed outside of an allocated country code.