.co.de is just a standard SLD you could have owned and operated if you had registered it like any other domain first. A gTLD requires significant up front investment and review+approval from ICANN after demonstration you have the technical capacity to run it, as well as being an actual top level domain.

Not that every gTLD is the pinnacle of reliability (see this post) but your experience with a generic SLD isn't indicative of anything in this case.