Interesting indeed. I must admit that I am one of those who has never really seen the need for the "let a thousand flowers bloom" philosophy of TLDs. When I started on the ALAC, I said as much a couple of times. I was so shouted down and told I really did not understand things that I learned to keep my mouth shut (about this anyway). Until recently when it has somewhat become acceptable if not universal within At-Large. Alan At 31/03/2011 03:51 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:

It is interesting to note Antony's chronology, and the observation that as ALAC has grown more democratic and less appointed, it has cooled to the gTLD hysteria about gTLDs shared by ICANN's more-vested interests. Correlation does not necessarily infer causality, but I do think there's a definite connection here. The more At-Large reflects the Internet end user, and the more that the end user community knows about ICANN, the less it cares about the panic rush for more TLDs.

The only exception to this is the IDN fast track for ccTLDs, which did have end-user demand (and my full support).