the difference between .co .im .me .cc .in etc.. is that they're internationalized since they don't have a real own internet market/usage back home.
Thats quite true but only for German internet users - they (just as we are here in Russia with our .ru) can/do see the diffrence, even more - it probably makes crucial difference to them if it's .de or .cc.
But i was talking of US/English speaking countries - i need US natives help here - do you feel (try not to be a domainer for a moment) any difference from language/cultural/whatever point when you are presented with .cc vs .de domain (and most of the time you see quite long messy URL in google results where extension is buried somewhere in the middle of slashes/keywords/=/?/http/etc) ?
i doubt it. so the point is as long as you are not .de or .ru or .co.uk citizen your eyes and brain would probably treat all non-com/net just the same way (providing that you paid attention at all) - no preferences, no prejudice, just some funny letters meaning nothing.
put simply i suspect insurancequotes.de vs insurancequotes.cc makes zero difference in terms of click-thru ratio for US market. which is what is definately being targeted by the buyer - as you pointed <english keyword> + .de makes no sense for German web ..
if so collecting blahblah.de is as smart as picking blahblah.cc/co/in/etc which doesnt shock us, right?
i also dont see any reason for google to rank .de differently (in non-de geographics) than other cctlds. even more - there's no indications that google takes tld into account for ranking purposes as long as site language is explicitly english.
but what the hell is the use of buying them on bido for $38 - thats where i give up... lets hope richface and GiftedDomains will uncover soon..