The point of .pro is that it strives to have more credibility than .com. You have to be a qualified professional and agree to professional use to own a .pro. Any Joe can register a .com and there are no registry repercussions for misuse.
I don´t necessarily think a .com site is genuine just because it´s a .com. If I find a site and I´m thinking of joining it or using a credit card on it, I still plug the name into Google and see what other people have got to say about it whether it´s a com or not.
I would agree that something like Escrow.com has more credibility as a domain than Escrow.pro because I would assume that if they can afford to retain or buy a domain worth $1m+, they are more likely to be trustworthy and legit than a site called CheapEscrow.com or BargainEscrow.com.
The thing is hardly anybody or any business can afford a domain like Escrow.com and I´m not convinced a 2 word .com confers any more credibility than a ccTLD or a striking single word domain in any alternative extension, for example Last.fm.
I can´t see what somebody could possibly object to about a domain name like Copier.pro. I don´t think a copier manufacturer would want it, they would already have their brand like Xerox or Canon, but for a distribututor, importer or maintenance company it´s a perfect domain name, it says what you want people to think about you, it incorporates the extension as part of the brand so you don´t waste letters.
Check out copierpro.com.au for proof that real businesses want pro brands. Why wouldn´t somebody chop off the .au and com part of that domain and save typing 6 characters?
If somebody said end users don´t know about .pro, there are only 7,000-8,000 registered, it´s difficult to register because of the restrictions, it´s expensive to register, will never catch on etc etc, I would agree with them up to a point but I don´t buy the argument that .pro isn´t brandable, credible, or useful to business because it is and there are millions of developed sites that prove it. Type in "allinurl: pro.com" in Google and tell me why millions of sites wedge a pro before .com. The .com pretty much has to be there, the pro bit doesn´t, it´s added voluntarily to create a brand that talks to the customer. The beauty of .pro it is allows you to create a distinctive brand that conveys expertise to the customer but gets rid of 3 characters. With branding shorter is always better; Last.fm is better than Lastfm.com. Copier.pro is better than Copierpro.com.
The vast majority still think Copierpro.com is better than Copier.pro. It´s like Henry Ford saying you can have any color as long as its black, we laugh at that now but back then it made perfect sense. People are risk averse so why they stick to convention like limpits.
I liken .com Vs alternative extensions to the move west in the US. .com is the east coast, alternatives are the west coast. Most people didn´t move west initially, it appealed to people who didn´t have any land in the east, it´s the same with domains. People register .me and .pro because they don´t have any .com land. And the truth is, things can grow just as well in the west, if not better, than they grow in the east. The domain extension parallel here is alternatives often provide better goodness of fit and value for money. If enough people go west and cultivate their land, it won´t matter what the landed .com gentry in the east think.
