People just google “bob builder” anyway. Domain doesn’t matter so much.
Most people google everything. A significant number of people google "google" in their browser's search/URL-bar to get to Google.com and search for whatever site they could have gone to directly. Builder Bob isn't going to change the average user's behavior in navigating the web.
You're going to walk around calling your local construction company "bobbuilder.com"? That's a weird vibe for a business that takes place offline. And it doesn't matter because people will still google "bob builder"
> There's a reason amazon decided to refer to itself as amazon.com until everyone got it, and that probably saves them billions in google ads per year.
OK but they still buy all the top ad spots for "amazon" and "amazon.com"
2. Even if people know they want amazon.com, they're still going to search for amazon.com instead of figure out where the url bar is.
Today they do. When a domain was $200 to register in the 90’s, people treated URLs like phone numbers were also treated at the time - to be written down, memorized and then typed precisely in (with slashes!) to find whatever Bob the builder was offering.
It’s odd to me tbh that phone numbers were solved with contact lists and address books, along with the occasional “new phone, who dis?”
This was the case well into the 2000s, if I recall correctly, and even into the mid-late 2010s, when URL shorteners proliferated to manage the complicated URLs generated by Google Forms etc.
What's odd about that? I didn't really understand your comment.
I guess it’s been so long that I needed to find and type out a phone number that I don’t think about it any more.
idlez.amway.com!
Otherwise you are correct that it doesn't really matter. The main value of gTLDs is that we ran out of decent available .coms a while ago.
Single letter domains look cool (I guess) and signal that the org has the money to buy a premium domain. Similar to "mortgage.com"
They are, yes, and it's not exactly new news although the better word would be "pointless" (they're not exactly worthless since some people do pay for them).