Here some food for thought. This is a report about what Matt Cutts said on the subject at the 2008 Domain Roundtable Conference:
“The question came up about whether it matters which TLD (top-level domain) you’re using. For example, do .com domains carry more weight than a .net, .us, .info, etc. He said that TLD doesn’t matter–that’s the way Larry and Sergey originally designed the Google algorithm. The algorithm doesn’t care where the page is located, it’s all about PageRank (LINKS) of the particular page. At the end of answering this question, he did admit that they might have started to look at particularly cheap (and spammy) TLDs differently than other TLDs–or they might start considering TLD in their algorithm if they’re not already doing so.”
Source: http://www.seo.com/blog/conferences/…in-roundtable/
I’m not sure how accurate this report is since it seems to imply that Matt contradicts himself. Usually, that is just the spin the author places on an article when he chooses not to believe what is said. I wasn’t there so I would take it with a grain of salt.