Wouldn't that also depend on the target audience of the site? If a site was targeted at the same people that use HN for example, I doubt they'd have a problem with the site using a .net
Most people (even geeks) use google to find a site they don't remember the exact url for, and google does a very good job at finding that url, regardless if there is a .com with the same name.
Eg. searching for 'python' gets you python.org as 1st result. You don't want to go to the .com
Comments
Wouldn't that also depend on the target audience of the site? If a site was targeted at the same people that use HN for example, I doubt they'd have a problem with the site using a .net
What if they only sort of peripherally remember the name? It's about finding it, rather than using it.
Most people (even geeks) use google to find a site they don't remember the exact url for, and google does a very good job at finding that url, regardless if there is a .com with the same name.
Eg. searching for 'python' gets you python.org as 1st result. You don't want to go to the .com
Because a ton of people link to python.org. Your startup most likely will not have that advantage.
Also, I wonder how many people (say, someone's boss), heard about this cool Python language and just tried python.com. Oops.
Single data point: I had not seen python.com before this, and have been programming in Python for a few years.
Somehow I also remember it's php.ne, not .com, even though I haven't visited that site so much lately.
But both of these were already an established internet brand when I started using them.
Well, Gruber has daringfireball.net and .com