Vanity
If you want to part someone from a large sum of money, exploiting their vanity is a good way to do it.
I have yet to meet anyone who cares if a site is .com .co.uk .us .tv or anything more exotic. In most cases it is hidden inside an anchor tag, and they see some other phrase which they click on. Or they just type "amaz" (Amazon) or "lewis" (John Lewis) or "there" (for theregister) into their browser, and it finds the rest for you in an instant. Or they Google.
Isn't the main purpose of the DNS to insert a level of indirection, so traffic can be transparently diverted from one IP address to another. If the original design had been virtual and physical numerical IP addresses in a much bigger number-space than four billion (maybe 64 bits), would anyone have bothered inventing a DNS? They haven't invented one for telephone numbers and nobody seems to care. We just cache the useful ones locally and "Google" or "link" to the others.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
