RealNames was one of the

RealNames was one of the tech bubble's stupidest ideas. Users, instead of typing in a URL, would type in a single world, and rely on the RealNames system - built into Microsoft's Internet Explorer - to take them to the right site. Sites would pay RealNames for the privilege of "owning" certain keywords, and users wouldn't have to type ".com" or ".co.uk" in the URL. Problem was, there was no problem - users found they could stretch to typing in the whole URL, or discovered that the auto-complete function built into browsers did the job for them. And now, not before time, RealNames is about to die.