My parents are typical web users. Fairly tech savvy, but not tech insiders. I recall telling them about bit.ly. It took a while to explain that it wasn't bitly.com, bit.ly.com, etc. They ended up just searching for it instead of typing in the domain name.
Think of the added friction this causes... and as we all know, every added interaction detracts from the conversion funnel. Taken in aggregate, many startups cannot afford the attrition of a shitty domain name.
And they found it. That's how a large, large number of people find web sites these days, and it works fine.
The public are hugely influenced by branding, advertising, look and feel, and experiences. They might not put the feelings they have into words like insiders do, but those things absolutely exist and insiders to the retail, advertising, and similar industries have all sorts of jargon to analyze the behavior of the public.
A rose by any other name still smells sweet, but thornbush isn't the way to market it.