On Sun, Feb 20, 2022 at 11:36 PM Karl Auerbach via At-Large <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:

[...] the domain name system is slowly fading from the public eye; that we are moving into a world in which DNS names are becoming more a part of the hidden machinery of the net (like MAC addresses) and that higher level naming abstractions, things like Twitter names or Facebook handles, are becoming the more prevalent forms of naming on the net.

You're right of course, but there's a whole industry of self-proclaimed branding experts holding inventories of "memorable" domain names that prays you're not. It's a very burstable bubble.

But it's not just social media handles and emojis that threaten. In parts of Asia and elsewhere, the PITA of non-Latin strings have been widely bypassed in favour of QR codes pointing to "illegible" domains. That's where the real Universal Acceptance lies.

I also am of the belief that on the net attributes are often more important than names. For instance, if I am looking to buy some machine screws I care more about the attribute "hardware store" than any particular name of such a store.

Arguably search engines meet much of this need already. One could and should have realized that "memorable" domain names were on the way down once browser makers merged the search and URL entry fields. From then on, typing <mumble> would almost always yield a more satisfying result than specifying <mumble.com> or for that matter <mumble.anything>. The commoditization of common words and especially category names, driven by an ever-growing mining of TLDs under ICANN, has just sped the process of turning people towards search and away from normal domain names.

Cheers,

Evan