I still think .com is the best extension. That's not a brave position to take in this world. Given the choice between the exact match .com and the same name somewhere else, I'd take the .com almost every time.
Where I think we get rigid is the next step. We're right that .com is king, and then we go ahead and seat every other extension at the kids' table, and buyers don't always carve it up that way.
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So the question I actually find useful isn't "is this a .com." It's whether the extension is helping the name or getting in its way.
Some extensions add something. They hand the buyer a little context before they've even thought about it. Take .tv. If the name touches video, streaming, sports, interviews, creator stuff, the extension is doing work. It's not tacked on the end. It's part of what the name means, and in some cases it reads better than whatever longer, more awkward .com you'd have to settle for. Same logic on .app. A clean name on .app tells you it's an app. Nothing to decode. The name and the ending are pulling the same direction.
.ai is the loud one right now and I want to be careful here, because "the keyword fits AI" is not a free pass. There are as many bad .ai names as bad .com names, probably more lately. But when the word genuinely lines up with automation or agents or software or data, the extension makes the whole thing feel current instead of forced. That's when an alternate TLD starts to feel like somebody chose it on purpose.
That's the part I keep landing on. A good alternate extension feels chosen. There's a real gap between a buyer thinking "this fits what we're building" and a buyer shrugging because the .com was gone and this was what was left. You can usually feel which one you're looking at.
A gaming name on .gg, a video brand on .tv, a software tool on .io, those tend to land. But a clunky three-word phrase doesn't get rescued by a decent keyword and a trendy ending. That's the trap. You spot a word you like, and you talk yourself past the fact that the full name doesn't sit right.
The extension has to match the use case, and clarity matters more here than it does in .com precisely because in .com nobody has to think about the ending at all. With an alternate TLD the buyer is processing two things, the name and the extension, and if both make them work, you've probably already lost them. Clean word plus fitting extension can sell. Confusing phrase plus an unfamiliar ending is a much harder ask.
This is where I think the debate gets flattened. Domainers will talk about alternate extensions like they're one bucket, and they're nowhere near it. A good .ai and a random .biz aren't doing the same job. A clean .io and some keyword jammed into an extension nobody uses for that market aren't either. The extension is either supporting the name or it's adding friction, and those are very different outcomes wearing the same costume.
None of this is me telling anyone to ignore .com. The .com still carries the trust and the resale ceiling and the long-term brand weight that most extensions just don't have. But the choice in front of a buyer usually isn't "perfect .com versus alternate TLD." More often it's a short clean alternate against a longer, weaker .com with an extra word bolted on to make it available. Would a startup rather have the clean one-word .io or the clunky three-word .com? Would a media project take the strong .tv or the .com with "online" or "hq" stuck on the end? Sometimes the .com still wins that. Sometimes it doesn't, and I don't think pretending otherwise helps anybody.
The alternate TLDs I end up liking aren't trying to pass as .com. They work because the whole thing makes sense. The word, the ending, and what it's for are all aimed at the same idea. So when I'm looking at one I'm really just asking whether the extension is making the name easier to believe in or making the buyer do extra work to get there. If it's helping tell the story there might be something. If it's just the ending that was left over after the good names were taken, the keyword can look as nice as it wants on paper.