Are domain names important?

[Warning: Slight ICT nerdiness ahead]

So, those of you who have been following the news will know that the .xxx domain is starting registrations. The idea is that Adult sites can have .xxx at the end instead of .com, .org or whatever. Already larger companies are trying to bag either own domain to prevent other people from using it. For example disney.xxx would be registered by Disney just to prevent someone making disney-themed adult content or something.


So, this leads to my question - Are domains still important? Is it vital to 'own' a particular domain, any similar spellings/mispellings or stuff you don't want people linking to your company? (The first one is called typosquatting, while the latter, to give an example - "atarisucks.com" is owned by Atari and redirects to their website).


In my opinion, the answer is no - and that it doesn't really matter anymore.


Before it may have been important. Search engines weren't so good at all, so if you wanted to visit an online shop, you're just go to h t t p colon slash slash w w w dot shop dot com or whatever. Your friend told you of an awesome website? He hands you the URL and you type it in yourself.


How many people still that sort of thing nowadays? If I'm looking for a website on llamas , I won't manually type in "llama.com" "llama.org" "llamas.com"... or whatever, I will open my favorite search engine, type in "llamas" and determine which websites seem most reputable by the blurb. The only times I type in the URL manually is if I know it by heart, or if I've visited the site before (so FF gets it from the history)


So in this day and age, we don't really need to have bagged a particular URL, since people are going to use a search engine to find the site anyway.


A funny note I'd like to end with was that I once bought a bottle of Gatorade, which upon its neck had "Google: Gatorade" written on it.


So, if you disagree, please Discuss.