So basically, we are creating a two-tier internet where people with money can pay a lot for nice names and others will be considered cheap for having a .com at the end? Way to go democratic internet....
I wonder if they actually stopped long enough to consider the actual pros and cons on this.
Possibly. But say I'm starting a video-sharing website - I'm at a big competitive disadvantage when my customers need to type and remember an extra domain-name level compared to my competitors (who own '.video', '.movie', '.youtube', etc. while i might own '.bobsvideo.fail').
Except that, as discussed above, "youtube" by itself is not a valid host name. It would have to be "mysite.youtube"
Still easier than you having "mysite.bobsvideo.fail" I agree, but frankly most people don't even find sites via the domain name. They'll google "Bobs Video" and see what comes up.
I've personally always thought that tlds was dumb. I never understood why things needed to be partitioned like that. Is there any technical reason to have them?
Also, it's very bothersome that domains are backwards. It's always irked me.
That being said, the amount of money required for a gTLD is absurd.
Seems like exposing readable unique resource identifiers inevitably brings some sort of confusion and/or unjustness.
The only fair alternative would be no visible URIs (UUIDs or plain IPs could be used) and better search. There still is the ordering of results and SEO issues, but it's up to user—change your query or search engine if you aren't satisfied. The security issue (phishing) would require a bit more work to sort out, but I'm sure that's doable.
Domain names could still be used, but strictly for basic infrastructure-related things, like search engine directory.
I wonder if they actually stopped long enough to consider the actual pros and cons on this.