CircleID

I would like to dispute the notion that third level domains are not successful.
In countries that have established third level domains as the norm, such as most latin american countries, they've been well accepted, are regularly used with very few exceptions, and have become completely natural for the citizens of those nations.
The fact that where there is the option of registering second level domains or third level domains the first option always wins could be attributed to marketing or other factors that should be less important in deciding which one is the best system than useability, efficiency and flexibility.

Enrique, you are right in most of your points. I always liked the way the UK's Nominet has established nearly 5 million .uk domains. But when I want to have a look on their statistics I often have to try twice since I never know if I have to type in www.nominet.com.uk or www.nominet.gov.uk or www.nominet.org.uk (which is the URL).

In today's world many things are build on marketing. Marketing is not a bad, even governments are started using it, but when it comes to E-Government things are often complicated. I think that modern E-Government should start with easy communication from government to the people and easy communication also means short and memorable URLs. When UK's people could intutively use www.tax.uk instead of www.hmrc.gov.uk internet usage might become a little bit more user friendly.