AFAIK the extension doesn't matter in terms of search engine rankings. What matters is content and # & quality of links to your site.
Yes its position can be matched with .com. All it count is how you promote your website link and link building.
some people own the domains for the value of the names, and most valuable domains are the *.com I believe.
Maybe you are confuse with a brand name using .com In search engines it doesn't matter if it's .com, .ws or any domain extensions what matter most is the quality of the site if the site deserves to be on the top spot.
What I actually meant is that when you for example have a domain name with an important keywords such as nintendo.ws/nu, is it just as good as nintendo.com for scoring worldwide in Google?
I have not seen anything that indicates the extension affects ranking in any way. If it does, I think the affect is slight and good SEO and link building can make up for it. For example, I have saori.ws that ranks well in Yahoo and Google for "SAORI Japanese Weaving".
The extension does matter.. At least that's what I am seeing from my domains... Besides the SE rankings are dependent on your search location. If you are from a country of a relevant ccTLD you naturally will see more sites from that ccTLD. While it might be true that you can beat any .coms SE ranking by applying SEO to any other extension with the same name, the .com extension still seem to carry some inherent authority when it comes to natural keyword rankings.
Does anyone knows what The Big "G" think??? I don't think so. Just made a unique content then build the links, and your site will go on their top first page no matter your domain extension. I have seen .co.cc domain extension beat the .com extension on google search results.
How do you know what you are seeing is from the extention and not other things like content and links?