[ih] Funny how things work out

[Joseph Touch]

> On Feb 1, 2021, at 10:58 AM, Dave Crocker via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> On 2/1/2021 10:30 AM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>> Fast forward to today, and I no longer have a clue what name to use to
>> find what I want online, and the proliferation of TLDs and explosion of
>> names isn't helping.
>> I'm wondering if, from the Users' perspective, the DNS mechanisms have
>> simply become unusable and irrelevant.
> 
> The model you describe is for searching.  The DNS doesn't do that.  It does lookup. As already noted, there's a basic difference between being able to guess a string versus being able to remember a string. There's also a difference between longer-term vs. shorter-term remembering.

As an aside, Jon had tried to reserve the single-letter .com names (a.com <http://a.com/>, b.com <http://b.com/>, etc.) for a related reason. I think his idea was that, at some point, all DNS names in .com would be randomly one-time assigned to one of these 26 bins, as would all future requests. 

This served a few purposes:
	- undercutting the ‘guessable’ nature of .com names
		thus forcing its use as intended for remembering only
	- undercutting the assumption that .com names had to be copyright-like unique
		thus allowing multiple assignments for the same name

I.e., if there are 26 different versions of ford.X.com <http://ford.x.com/>, then nobody would care so much about whether someone else had it assigned first. 

Finally, if no single organization could own more than one letter’d variant, then it would undercut the artificial market for name-squatting and reselling.

It remains, IMO, a good idea, if we could ever somehow force it to happen.

Joe