> There were only 279 TLDs back then, or 32 TLDs if you excluded all the country code TLDs. Arguably that's about 30 too many and really the root of this whole

> There were only 279 TLDs back then, or 32 TLDs if you excluded all the country code TLDs. Arguably that's about 30 too many and really the root of this whole mess. Imho Postel, for all the good he did, in retrospect mismanaged DNS by not establising really any structure or policy, in a way that feels now bit naive/idealistic (and US-centric). By the time ICANN took over dot-com bubble was already knocking at the door and laissez faire anything goes attitude of DNS pretty well cemented, so any drastic changes would have been difficult to accomplish. Essentially by leaving the legacy TLDs completely open and mostly without restrictions or hierarchy/structure their meaning was eroded away, and if the TLDs have no meaning then it's only logical to throw them away.