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Algorithm wise it would make sense that google would rank things like this as less worthy.

For one thing most authoritative domains for pagerank purposes are not going to have these "hacks" they are going to have the usual suspects (.com .net .org .edu .gov .info .etc to name the obvious US ones).

"Plenty of popular domains using ccTLDs rank just fine."

"Plenty" is not a large number when you are talking about tens of millions of sites that don't do it this way.

http://youtu.be/yJqZIH_0Ars

Thanks for that. Good information to know.

Shouldn't you also source yours, or does your anecdotal evidence outweigh his?

You are completely right. It's easy to ignore the rafter in your own eye. My apologies.

correct - it is one signal that comes into play. but what about a .es domain registered on an English host with an IP shared with English sites, English content, and English visitors? Google will rank that all day for English queries.