Actually the original URL would have been http://zdnet.com/etc. when this (rather silly) article was published in 1999. CNET Networks, which owned com.com, tv.com, radio.com, search.com, and news.com, bought ZDNET a year later in 2000.

A few years afterward CNET began to transition many sites including news.com and zdnet.com over to suffixes ending in .com.com; I vaguely recall being told that it was to enable CNET-network-wide cookies without that era's browsers pitching a fit. (Note the Wayback Machine indexed it as zdnet.com.com only after 2002.)

Eventually I helped (I was not alone but was the most vocal) to make the switch away from news.com.com to news.com, which made more sense and served readers better. Of course I've since left to found http://recent.io/, but thought I'd inject a little history as someone who worked at CNET Networks during part of that .com.com time.