I'm not thrilled at seeing Google grow in the registry space as I think that they already have too much influence over the internet as it is, but at least they didn't take another file extension as a TLD.
The question is what assumptions are implied by "TLD". Will it be used by other people. How many. Will there be a registry. Will the registry "rent" domain names as some sort of business. Will you try to get the nameservers for the TLD listed in someone else's root.zone file, e.g., ICANN's.
It's possible to create a TLD that makes none of these assumptions. For example, I have some TLDs I created on the home network.
The idea of a "right" to create a TLD assumes some sort of valid legal or regulatory framework. But this does not exist. There is an imaginary authority that relies 100% on voluntary compliance, embodied in a private US corporation called "ICANN", but it's imagined "authority" has no basis in the law of any country. It will gladly take peoples' money but it offers no means of enforcing the "rights" it purports to "grant".
Trademark law is perhaps the only legal framework governing what you do with your TLD. But the idea that a TLD must resemble a trademark is yet another assumption, not a requirement. For example, the TLDs I created for use on the home network cannot be confused with any trademark.
You don't need that. Just run a dns server which returns the appropriate results for the tld of your choice. Getting others to recognize and repeat might need a little "grease".
They applied for them as part of ICANN's New gTLD program in 2012. Due to overwhelming demand (and bureaucratic slowness), it's been a very slow process getting those applications approved and implemented.
While I am not thrilled by this, it's still better than the horrid ".zip" and ".mov" domains they pushed a few months ago. They could have doubled down and started pushing ".exe", ". docx", or ". rar" domains...
Probably to cut what overhead there was in servicing users directly.
Google is still operating TLDs as "Google Registry" since they can just easy mode that part as a backend service, they just push you now to go to a domain reseller.
Because Registrars are high-effort (customers are the general public), low unit price, low-margin and Registries are low effort (customers are only Registrars), high unit price, and high margin.
Gandi lists lol.meme as a premium domain for over $800. We're also in the early access period where even normal domains cost thousands of dollars to reserve.
As with most of the recent additions this is just so insignificant in the scheme of things as anyone with whatever idea has a million options for their domain and whatever ends up getting promoted, and more importantly, linked to, is what will work. Hardly anyone is typing the domains so it's just a marketing tag.
Also kinda generally resent the meme culture we have created, what it has come to represent. A whole generation of toxicity has come from it (doing/approaching everything for the lols etc). That fact that stonks whatever is listed in the official blog post. The old misc cat things and whatever were fun at first but what came after..blech.
