WWW Redundant?

So I was wondering what does the www in a URL actually do anymore? Does it actually have any useful purpose at all?

I have noticed a trend with companies including Google moving towards displaying all URL's without www.

So for advertising and simplicity purposes perhaps it is best to just print as domain.com rather than www.domain.com.

My only concern is that some people may not even recognise a URL without the www.

Thoughts?

I wouldn't put the www in advertising. I reckon the majority of people would look at the tld etc rather than the www to distinguish a url.

In saying that I'd still redirect the actual site to www.

Side note: Far too many sites don't set up their site to work without the www. What a shambles.

Some aren't small sites either. I was always amazed that http://www.bom.gov.au doesn't work without www. For the amount of time it'd take to set up.... retarded.

I can't dig it out but I once read Tim Berners-Lee quoted as saying his biggest regret was adding http:// to the prefix of web addresses, which in the end turned out to be entirely unnecessary. Think of the number of times you've typed that out, multiply that by about a billion, and you can imagine the time and paper all wasted. I don't think he mentioned "www" but the same woud apply I would imagine.

I think everyone knows these days when you say domain.com you mean the full http://www.domain.com and it sure saves a mouthful when reading it out! "each-tee-tee-pee, slash, sl;ash, double-you double-you double-you dot"

I think it was the double forward slashes from memory. He could have designed URLs not to have them.

Yeah you still need the http: to distinguish the protocol.

I never type an http://? Its just a behaviour thing.

In print I use "http://www.beerfestival.co.nz" for example, as opposed to "Online: beerfestival.co.nz"

To actually answer the question though, no www is not redundant, it is a hostname used for your website.

We serve the biggie website from www, the static content from static, the mobile site from m. I spose I could make them w, s and m

if ya dealilng with secure sites (i.e https://) it can be pretty pricey to have both https://mysite.com and https://www.mysite.com covered. you would need two seperate certs or a wild card cert.