AFAICS the nominal reason was that TLDs like .com were/are getting crowded and country based one's (e.g. .io) were being mis-used as generic TLDs So as a react

AFAICS the nominal reason was that TLDs like .com were/are getting crowded and country based one's (e.g. .io) were being mis-used as generic TLDs So as a reaction to that ICANN allow new generic TLDs to be registered. In and of itself, I don't think that's a bad idea. However the $180,000 registration fee seems a bit like a money grab, the lack of restrictions on the allowed names (e.g. .sucks) and the land-grabbing by large companies on a wide range of generic names (mainly from what I've seen Google and Amazon) have made the process a bit of a mess.