I think no, this is not an iteration about domain names becoming irrelevant. The discussion focused on how to ensure browser users can identify
what domain they are visiting so IMO, it strengthens the use of domain names by having users trust the domain they are visiting.
The challenge as I see it is with the prevalence of many new TLDs, the risk of phishing and malware attacks are higher where bad persons try to trick persons to either:
- go to bad persons' website(s) at domains pretending to be another organisation/service in order to get user login credentials to such organisations/services or
- open links to malware files and become infected.
So typically, bad persons would use typos that look similiar to the legitimate domain or add a few characters before or after the 2nd level domain
So for example.com, there could be
exannple.com ,
examp1e.com, eexamples.com and
examples.com .
With more TLDs and wider use of ccTLDs, bad persons could also do things like
examples.xyz, examp1e.tv and so on.
With longer URLs, one can mask the legitimate domain as a third or fourth level subdomain of a bad persons' domain.
Very long URLs like this are more difficult to parse and read on a mobile phone. Content Management Systems for websites over the years unfortunately generate long URLs that do work to direct persons to websites
but are obscure for persons to parse.
So an example of a bad URL :
https://community.icann.org.can.work/display/atlarge/2020-01-27+At-Large+Technology+Task+Force+Call?preview=/126420432/126422910/atlarge-technology-taskforce-27jan20-en.pdf
Persons glancing at this URL would see
icann.org and may think everything is fine and go ahead and click on the URL when its not.
Nearly all browser vendors are using the Public Suffix List at
https://publicsuffix.org/ which started as a Mozilla Initiative.
From the Public Suffix List website, a "public suffix" is one under which Internet users can (or historically could) directly register names.
Tracking this is important to ensure that a website can't set cookies that other websites can read or modify under the same domain.
What the episode showed was that Mozilla Firefox (at least on the desktop) highlights the part of the domain that is the public suffix by making it slightly bolder than the rest of the URL.
It is however to me, very, very subtle and I wish that Mozilla (and other browsers) make the public suffix part more bold or even a slightly bigger font size to alert users as
to the true domain being viewed.
Some mobile browsers are showing only the domain and not the rest of the URL and allow for the full URL can be viewed and edited when you tap on the URL bar which also helps.