This is a debate that has been front-and-center in the domain community and will only continue to get more intensely debated as time goes by. Will .COM rise in value and remain the gold standard or will it get lost in the sea of new top level domains?
The reason this is such a hot topic is that it has to do with the long-term value of .COM domains which, understandably, is a sensitive area. Like it or not, there’s a polarization that’s going on and the mainstream media is just as divided as the domain industry is.
“The .com suffix had special meaning for the first generation of Internet users. For children born this century, it’ll be just one fish in the sea.” (Source, Yahoo Tech)
If you read the article you will also notice that they refer to the new gTLDs as “new domain names,” which makes sense since your average person (even someone reading Yahoo Tech) doesn’t know what the heck a TLD is.
“But the new domain names are here to stay, and businesses and consumers must adjust to the new reality. ICANN approved hundreds of the 1,930 applications for the new domains, with 417 on the Internet already.” (Source, Yahoo Tech)
I personally don’t think that .COM will get lost in a sea of new TLDs but I do think that some other TLDs like .NET, .ORG, .INFO and many more will have some real competition and see their values impacted.
What do you think? Will .COM just be another fish in the sea or will it always be #1?

.Com will be the whale shark of the Sea. Then you will have the rest.
People don’t want to wait for the new extensions to arrive or get popular, it’s human nature.
No one will “trust” other extensions except what is familiar to them.
Now when will the sharks on “shark tank” pull money together to go buy Sharktank.com, Would that not be funny to get the owner of that name on that show. Talk about an extension of a brand on the internet and none of them on the show have thought to buy it.