They will matter less - just like businesses used to pay a premium for a "memorable" phone number. There will, for the foreseeable future, be benefits - some me

They will matter less - just like businesses used to pay a premium for a "memorable" phone number. There will, for the foreseeable future, be benefits - some memorability, especially while ".com" remains the "only" TLD for most people, and also SEO benefits (I suspect example.com will rank higher than example.tips, all other things being equal). But over the next few years (and it may be 5-10), as people get used to a wide variety of TLDs, I expect businesses to start taking advantage of the new real estate. I doubt many average consumers could explain the difference between tips.example.com and example.tips, especially if it's a trusted link rather than a URL on a tv advert. So Example LLC, faced with a 5-figure price to secure their .com or a 2-3 figure price to secure a different TLD will surely begin taking the lower cost option. And I suspect this will become a virtuous cycle away from .com's ubiquity[1]. [1] The next question is why .biz etc didn't work. I would likely have made this prediction ten years ago, and been wrong, though shrinking availability of .coms makes it more likely now.