Like the author I would also have no problem in paying a few of several hundred dollars as an initial registration one time fee, for a domain like chris.blog.

I would really prefer using chris.blog instead of buying a .com domain like this-is-chriss-development-blog.com, just because any shorter .com domain is already taken.

Right on. While I said "I appreciate a good name", I'm truly a sucker for a good name. Branding is huge, even when it's a personal brand.

So yes, a one-time fee of $250-$1,000 feels ok to me, especially considering what Automattic paid for the TLD.

It's still possible to come up with vanity domains using common TLDs. You just need to have some wiggle room (: I replaced a single letter in the shortened version of my own name and got a .net for it just a few months ago.

> So why not just register a .com

Because the name you wish to register is not available as .com domain.

> Nobody is going to remember or type in such a domain

I don't think this is true, I live in Europe and we have tons of country tlds, people use and remember them.

Also is chris.blog really so much longer to type then chris.com or a lot harder to remember? I don't agree.

At first it might feel strange to type something else then .com but as I said in europe we have country tlds and it works well.

I may be wrong and just speaking from experience, but Americans were really trapped in the .com/net/org for a long time. I think, because that's all we were exposed to... I didn't realize the depth and usage of CCTLDs until I moved to Europe, and saw them everywhere. When I gave my mom my first work email she added a .com after the .at at the end, and wondered why it never got to me.

> Also is chris.blog really so much longer to type then chris.com or a lot harder to remember? I don't agree.

It depends on the audience. If you have a non-technical audience or you are e-commerce a .com is basically a necessity still.

Also in Europe, but I've seen adverts using .travel domains (which are a bit older than most), like egypt.travel and ecuador.travel.

City domains, like sadiq.london.

Admittedly, I can't remember any publicity of the weirder ones, like .lol or .xyz.

There was an anti-trust case against Microsoft, they also have some money in the bank, so no this is for sure not the reason