Actually we should have switched to resource locators that are just plain strings ("ycombinator news threads 26558305" . It s what google has been pushing everyone to do anyway (readable URLs), and what the centralization of the web led to ( fb / twitter usernames). Its easy for people to parse and speak through the phone, and it would be a decentralized, natural revival of AOL keywords. It would also drop total google searches by a few tens of percent
Not sure where the protocol would fit though