No other domain extension is going to "take over" the place that .com extensions have in the public's mind in the next 10 years. (Probably ever) How do I know this- take a look at toll free 800 numbers in the US. The US ran out of toll free 800 numbers years ago. They added a number of other prefixes that are toll free. So what does American Idol have to do every time they give out their toll free 866 numbers- the have to warn the audience that these are 866 numbers, not 800 numbers.
It will take decades to retrain the public that there are toll free numbers that don't start with 800. And it will take decades to train the internet publuc that a business domain does not end in .com. That assumes that a substitute for .com exists, which isn't the case right now.
I wrote a blog post about .co a couple of months ago. Bottom line: I believe it'll become increasingly common, especially overseas, where people are used to it, e.g. they've been seeing names like company.co.uk.
.co domains are already boasting an above 76% renewal rate in their second year as an international TLD, not bad for such a young gun.
forget the .com of yesterday .co is the one to watch.
If that was the case, which domainI actually think the only way that .com will lose it's "specialness" is if there are a lot of alternatives - e.g. if all of .movie, .book, .shop, .xxx, .london, .nyc, etc, etc were to be approved and implemented as TLDs. - I don't think one alternative can beat .com, but I think hundreds of them could.
name extension you think will become
the most popular: .co, .me or .org?
As an aside, and definitely not as important as the human story, I do wonder what's going to happen to ".ly" over the coming weeks and months.
.org is already more popular then .co and .me
Don't forget that .co and .me are not US based extensions and this can have impact on you business.
.me and .co are created to make some amount of money for the registrar company. Most people outside domain industry didn't recognize them.