We've moved from a market where people would be able to just pick a name for something, to one where most names are taken.

Essentially, good .com names are now like prime real estate. Search engines and browsers have done a bad job at making other TLDs as accessible, so there's a natural bias towards them.

If domains are like land, I wonder why the market hasn't moved from a parking system where domains are resold at a premium, to a leasing system?