If I could go back in time and change how domain names work, I would probably do 2 things:
1. Flip the order of parts, ex. com.ycombinator.news - this makes the whole URL big-endian, instead of the absurd middle-endian system we have now.
2. Either
a. drop the requirement to have TLDs at all - gmail would just be "https://google.mail/inbox" (including my first suggestion; "google" is the root domain), or perhaps just "https://gmail/inbox"
OR
b. actually commit to a small number of strictly-enforced TLDs - com is not the default, it requires a corporate entity to register, we probably push on having a single TLD for individual humans so ex. blogs tend to live under... actually the "name" TLD wasn't a terrible idea but I'm flexible on exact details of that TLD, just so there's only one of them. Second-levels like us or eu are fine but should again actually enforce having an entity in that country so almost nobody ends up using io or such.
1. Flip the order of parts, ex. com.ycombinator.news - this makes the whole URL big-endian, instead of the absurd middle-endian system we have now.
2. Either
a. drop the requirement to have TLDs at all - gmail would just be "https://google.mail/inbox" (including my first suggestion; "google" is the root domain), or perhaps just "https://gmail/inbox"
OR
b. actually commit to a small number of strictly-enforced TLDs - com is not the default, it requires a corporate entity to register, we probably push on having a single TLD for individual humans so ex. blogs tend to live under... actually the "name" TLD wasn't a terrible idea but I'm flexible on exact details of that TLD, just so there's only one of them. Second-levels like us or eu are fine but should again actually enforce having an entity in that country so almost nobody ends up using io or such.