I think what it shows is people will get the country code for their name such as .com.au and the .com if they can also.
Businesses would be crazy in Australia to just use the .com and not get the .com.au also.
Yes there has been too much auDA red tape over the years and this hurt the .au namespace and cost .au registrants more money.
Well call them crazy because that is how it is going, looking at Racing.com which seems to be on TV 24x7, they don't own the .com.au. I thought they were stupid initially.
It think bigw.com shows yet again a growing preference for .com over .com.au for local sites. Things are changing as AUDA dithers around experimenting with obvious mistakes (.au) whilst ignoring the real problem (.com.au red tape). There is nobody sensible steering the ship, it is just listing in the wind.
Don't expect AUDA to actual fix anything, the country code will continue to slip.
Another good example of this is Youi.com which was acquired for 100k USD and forwards to Youi.com.auThe fact is most Australian will still visit the .com.au and not the .com for Australian based businesses
www.BigW.com is just url forwarded to www.BigW.com.au to prove this.
If they thought the .com was better they would url forward the .com.au to the .com
Same goes for www.Carsales.com it is still url forwarded to www.CarSales.com.au and not the other way around.
What they all have done is take off any domain extension from their logos and just now have the name and logo with no domain name extension on the website or logos....
- Click on www.BigW.com now and see where it goes to in the search bar of your browser www.Bigw.com.au
- Click on www.Carsales.com now and see where it goes to in the search bar of your browser www.Carsales.com.au
- Click on www.Youi.com now and see where it goes to in the search bar of your browser www.Youi.com.au