[LeoPanthera]

They are the same, but that's not really the point. www has been registered in addition to the entries for the root TLD. You said "the internals of the browser that automatically adds a www in front" - that's irrelevant. host isn't doing that, curl isn't doing that.

[iRomain]

You are right, they added a A record in the root zone file. I didn't know it was allowed.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31690379

[5ESS]

Did the owners of .com do the same thing?

Because http://com. Works as well.