Comment by ocdtrekkie
2 years ago
Because it's a natural monopoly. Nobody ever got taken seriously with a .biz address.
(.com is basically price-regulated because of this, FWIW, Verisign can't just raise prices whenever or however it wants. But obviously it's still a pretty sweet deal for them, I'd imagine.)
Hell, even .net will lose you traffic. If someone has your desired name with .com so that you use any other TLD, you will lose traffic. If your .com is taken by someone in the same line of work and not just a coincidental use of the same domain, then you'd be insane to not change the domain. I'm not sure how many people manually type domains in any more (I do though), and .com is muscle memory.
If a system is built in a way that creates a monopoly I'm not sure it's legitimate to refer to it as "natural". The characteristic that defines natural monopolies is that there's no realistic (at least known) alternative way to go about things which isn't also a monopoly.
Sure, it's a natural monopoly, but it's owned by a non-profit (ICAAN), so where is all the money going?