they dont fear the squatting, they fear the ultimate use of masquerading as them with easy, failed brand recognition.

we use online names as public certificates. we're doomed to this race.

If you use a "short, simple" string as a username across various services, the price you pay is that various others are going to be using that same name on other services.

You aren't entitled to a certain username on every service simply because you happened to be the first to register it on one service.