Comment by toast0
12 hours ago
> This is my theory because, a priori, 3LDs should be more profitable than 2LDs,
3LDs are less valuable. In a market of many different tlds, why register foo.bar.name when you could get foobar.name or foobar.something_else
Because your name is John Doe and not JohnDoe.
Your name is also not John.Doe.
Mr. Fraser registered neil.fraser.name in 2002, when 2nd level registration under .name was unavailable; fraser.com had been registered in 1996 and neilfraser.com in 2000; he may have been able to get .org or .net, their registration dates are later, but they may have been registered and there was a gap --- my personal domain shows a creation date of 2003, but I registered it much earlier and abandoned it, but got it back after it was registered and then abandoned by someone else.
.name added 2nd level registration in 2004 and it seems to be vastly preferred. .us added 2nd level registration in 2002 and it was vastly preferred to the locality based naming. People don't want to have to educate their contacts about "weird" domains, which includes having an "extra" dot in your hostname.