[wodenokoto]

It's kinda funny you mention that Google will kill the url.

For at least the past decade, advertisement in Japan has been showing people which search term to enter to find the website instead of a url.

[MaxBarraclough]

I can't tell if that's a worse idea than QR codes of URLs.

[wodenokoto]

You have to remember that broad support for Japanese characters in URLs are a fairly recent, and haven't really caught on.

So advertisers want people to type something in their native script in order to get to the product website. So while an English advertisement campaign might tell people to go directly to johnnysmattresses.com, a Japanese campaign couldn't do this, and instead ask people to search for ジョニーの布団.

[tyingq]

Remember the cuecat? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat

[MaxBarraclough]

Hadn't heard of that. Looks singularly awful.

Like URLs, but proprietary, exclusionary, and riddled with privacy and security issues.

[dokument]

kind of like, 'aol keyword'?