Are .com domains that important?

I usually tend to settle for a .org or .net if I can't get a .com.

For SEO reasons you may need to have a specific keyword in your domain (depending on your approach) therefore you would probably go to a different domain extension. But if you're just getting a domain for other uses always try get a .com trying different combos of words until you get one, otherwise people that forget that your domain might of been a .net or .org are just going to naturally type or go to .com first.

.net would be a great alternative to .com

com, net, org are better for international traffic, for the local traffic the extension of the country would be best, for examle, it for Italy, de for Germany and etc.

I don't build a business on a domain-name of which the .com variation already belongs to someone else. There's very little sense in that - it's all downside and potential future downside, however you look at it. :p

I actually build almost all my own niche sites on .info domains, because my subscribers and customers strongly prefer that - it speaks to them of an "informational" site, which carries a lot of credibility with them - and not on ".com" extensions (which they say looks to them like "just another marketer trying to sell something") but I do register the .com domains in each case, and I simply redirect the .com I'm not using to the .info I am using.

Some marketers dislike .info domains (some are even ill-informed enough to imagine that they're somehow "harder to rank", which is completely wrong), but customers tend to like them, and that's what matters to me.

But I certainly wouldn't want someone else owning the .com (and probably wouldn't ever be able to sell the site/business for as much, in future, under those circumstances!). That's a non-starter, for me. If I can't register the .com, I need to re-think the name.

For all ranking purposes, all the international TLD's are the same, as Google has consistently and openly been explaining for many years, in every possible medium at every possible opportunity. Theories out of line with that fact are pure myths from the Urban Myth Scool of Internet Marketing. But this decision isn't about SEO, of course. It's about much more important business issues like branding, credibility, traffic-loss, appearance and resale.

For me, I prefer the .com's if you will be building up the site into an authority site. I have used .net and .org and .info in the past.

It all just depends on what you plan on using the domain for.

For SEO - no.

For branding - not really.