Dot-Amazon spat latest: Brazil tells ICANN to go fsck itself, only 'govts control the internet' In an effort to block Amazon from getting the top-level domain .amazon, Brazil may have put governments on a crash course with the private sector over control of the web. In an aggressive and contradictory letter [PDF] on Wednesday to the overseer of the internet's domain name system, ICANN, Brazilian technology minister …
I guess he wanted a name that was already known, therefore memorable and near the top of an alpha listing. Many website listings were just lists in the early '90's. Altavista started in '95.
He choose to give a common name his commercial punt and name it after the river/region, so he has no right to claim priority over something that existed prior to his choice of name. It's not as if there wasn't a broad lexicon of names still available to register in '94.
If he wanted to rule the Internet, he should have registered internet.com or tat.com for that matter.
IIRC, internet.com was already taken at the time: I believe by one of the search engines, lycos or altavista. And tat wasn't really a word back then: not to mention it's at the low end of the alphabet and as you said, he preferred an A to be on top of alphabetical listings.
In practice, my browser autocompletes the whole address (e.g I type "the" and then I choose between www.theregister.co.uk and www.theonion.com), so I rarely have to type more than three letters. Rarely, I type the full name of the web site, and let google find what I mean.
TLDs are basically remains of a bygone era. They serve no purpose anymore. At best, they're a gimmick. In a better world, ICANN would have been forbidden to create any new ones.
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