I have mixed feelings as well, for the same reason, but I find it absolutely terrible that the citizens of Mali, RCA, Gabon, and Equatorial Guinea have basically been robbed of their TLD by their (mostly failed) governments.
https://tamouse.github.io/blog/politics/2019/10/02/why-is-th...
EDIT: it could also be argued that this controversy is beneficial for the Chagossians I guess. I didn't know anything about them until I purchased a .io domain a few years ago.
But if those TLDs don't even bring them any money and they're not named after something in the Chagossian's own language, do they even own them in any meaningful sense?
Aside from the right to return to their homelands, these people should be given some actual royalties from .io domain purchases. And then maybe also a new TLD that is more meaningfully connected to them and less likely to be hijacked.
You can fantasize about the hardships the citizens suffered for the appropriation of the .io TLD and draw any analogy you want, but there are probably more pressing needs of the people you're not addressing by spending time to supply this sort of sympathy.
Worse, imagine a world where you actually advocate for the displaced indigenous people to care about this problem. Probably you'd be asking them to divert attention from real problems such as being able to afford food tomorrow.
Firstly the US never bought into it so all the original successful internet companies are ".coms". For this reason if you are a global company, chances are you would prefer a ".com" to anything else. Most companies want to address a global audience and part of the point of e-commerce is to make this happen. So they don't necessarily want a parochial-seeming national tld but would prefer a global one. This makes country-specific tlds redundant for commerce.
Secondly the people running the national TLDs are (in my experience) often doing so to further their own egos and personal interests and so tend to offer a shitty service. This is why I gave up my ".co.uk" domain some years back. The UK NIC were just annoying in a bunch of different ways.
In Europe they are working very well and are used constantly.
.de is used by most Germans. .fr french, .at etc.
For example our community schools uses a .qa domain and the biggest telecom provider among various other sites.
What you're saying does not apply to all countries.
"Never bought into is" as never bothered and never cared about other countries (main character syndrome)
german people, for example, will trust a business running on a .de domain much more than a .com one.
in most cases it is much preferred for an international company to run the country-specific website on the according ccTLD. companies that "want to address a global audience" are a specific set of companies that might prefer a "global" website, but most businesses will run country specific sites, not "global" sites.
also not sure what the UK NIC being "annoying in a bunch of different ways" has to do with anything, or even means.
seems to me like you are living in your own world, far detached from reality.
The way in which the UK nic used to be annoying that is relevant for this is that they used to make it much harder to register, transfer and renew domains. So at some point even though I had a .co.uk and a .com I just stopped trying to transfer the .co.uk and let it lapse at the next renewal date.
UK transfers are surely more complicated than they have to be (push vs. pull logic).
and I can also see where you're coming from, since in the UK it doesn't seem to be such a big thing.
but in most other non-english speaking countries (or even .com.au or co.nz), ccTLDs are actually a big trust factor. also for example high-end keyworddomains sell for a multiple of the respective .com domain price. sometimes as much as 5-10 times.
.de has more weight than .net or .com for most people in Germany.
.fr and .be are as easy to manage as any other TLD, and they have the advantage that you're probably not going to be price gouged as they are not run for profit.