> but some of the gTLDs are quite ridiculous.

Case in point: .sucks, .wtf, .zip, .ninja

The fact .zip was created by Google of all companies is hilarious to me.

.sucks was a pure genius money making scheme where every major company has to squat (company).sucks - we own ours and used to use it to test our frame rules.

The "conspiracy theory" I buy into the most is that all these new TLDs are primarily motivated by the revenue of forcing every corp to register their equivalent domain.

Love that your company leaned into it for that purpose.

This isn’t a conspiracy theory. I accidentally ended up in a senior role at one of the new gTLD domain registries for a couple of years. “Name protection” - and partnering with the companies who offer corporate domain services to large corporations - was a core part of the commercial strategy.

Yes, the quotes around conspiracy theory were very intentional. :)

Get 300 friends to each give you $1,000, and you too, can be the administrator of your very own TLD. What're you going to choose? something lucrative, like .dev, or something fun, like .fun? The world is your .oyster!

.300 would seem more appropriate

Bit niche though. Might be quite a Spartan TLD.

Of course there’s a legitimate reason: when you want to buy a domain for your product using one of the old TLDs, it’s likely to be taken already, which means you’ll have to pay a significant sum for it, which means your project is serious.