The effect would be to give Google even more power. It wouldn't just be your older, less tech-savvy relative who now type "cnn" into the Google search bar every time they want to visit cnn.com.
Anecdotally, it's not just less tech-savvy people who do that. I do that today for most sites I visit that aren't bookmarked, because I don't trust myself to remember if domains are registered as `.org` or `.com`.
Of course, I use DuckDuckGo to do it instead of Google, and I also block ads because they're yet another area for phishing attacks. But look at HN for example -- I have HN bookmarked because I can't get myself to remember that it isn't `hackernews.com`. I have definitely used DuckDuckGo and Google in the past to find this website when I was on an unfamiliar computer.
The Google Ads phishing attacks are also an interesting point here -- they work. You can build a Google Ad for a product that points to a completely separate website, and you'll catch people. Arguably (probably) getting rid of readable names would make that problem worse, but it's not like the current situation is good. Domains are already hard to remember ("Does it have a dash in it? What's the TLD? Are the numbers spelled out?").
The question is whether it would even be possible at all to build a better system. I don't know.
Of course, I use DuckDuckGo to do it instead of Google, and I also block ads because they're yet another area for phishing attacks. But look at HN for example -- I have HN bookmarked because I can't get myself to remember that it isn't `hackernews.com`. I have definitely used DuckDuckGo and Google in the past to find this website when I was on an unfamiliar computer.
The Google Ads phishing attacks are also an interesting point here -- they work. You can build a Google Ad for a product that points to a completely separate website, and you'll catch people. Arguably (probably) getting rid of readable names would make that problem worse, but it's not like the current situation is good. Domains are already hard to remember ("Does it have a dash in it? What's the TLD? Are the numbers spelled out?").
The question is whether it would even be possible at all to build a better system. I don't know.