Yes, as noted in the RFC that reserved its use for mDNS:

    The special treatment of names ending in ".local." has been
    implemented in Macintosh computers since the days of Mac OS 9, and
    continues today in Mac OS X and iOS.  There are also implementations
    for Microsoft Windows [B4W], Linux, and other platforms.
    
    Some network operators setting up private internal networks
    ("intranets") have used unregistered top-level domains, and some may
    have used the ".local" top-level domain.  Using ".local" as a private
    top-level domain conflicts with Multicast DNS and may cause problems
    for users.  Clients can be configured to send both Multicast and
    Unicast DNS queries in parallel for these names, and this does allow
    names to be looked up both ways, but this results in additional
    network traffic and additional delays in name resolution, as well as
    potentially creating user confusion when it is not clear whether any
    given result was received via link-local multicast from a peer on the
    same link, or from the configured unicast name server.  Because of
    this, we recommend against using ".local" as a private Unicast DNS
    top-level domain.  We do not recommend use of unregistered top-level
    domains at all, but should network operators decide to do this, the
    following top-level domains have been used on private internal
    networks without the problems caused by trying to reuse ".local." for
    this purpose:

      .intranet.
      .internal.
      .private.
      .corp.
      .home.
      .lan.

Key words: We do not recommend use of unregistered top-level domains at all….

The drafts for the RFC date back to 2001.