Pratik, writing.desipundit.com:

In general, even in 2024, the layperson is still intimidated by a “custom domain.” My wife’s firstname.com is available and yet she isn’t interested in getting it. Perhaps if we focused on the cool factor and owning a piece of the Internet (instead of data portability) […] it would get more traction.

He’s probably right. Most people don’t care about data portability. But more of them are impressed by cool URLs. And we know what they say about cool URLs…