I'm sure the billions using the Internet won't be able to answer what "www" and ".com" stand for, but does it matter? I agree about the hyperlinks and some browsers (Safari) don't even show the URL so the domain becomes less and less important today, but on TV, print, and so on, the domain and the URL still matter and people know "www" and ".com" better than "http://", which is not shorter and is pretty cryptic as well.