This is not a very clever point. Plenty of things used to be caller "somethingnet" in order to advertise their ties with the internet. It was never about a tld. Kind of like how having "block" or "chain" in your app's name makes you "cool" nowadays.
I wonder if it was to associate with the internet or with Microsoft branding.
Microsoft went apeshit and called all their products .NET in the early 2000s. The branding was all over the place so I could see how calling your product *net might get you installs by association.
I mean, you could guess. The name even hints at it for anyone aware of the `.net` tld.
That's not a great solution, since many people are barely aware what at url is, but I think it should still be one that you and I (as people who are) use.
Similarly the article is fixed by guessing that google chrome is probably at chrome.google.com (also chrome.com), firefox is probably at firefox.com, cnn is probably at cnn.com, gmail is probably at mail.google.com, gmail.google.com, or gmail.com (actually all 3), hacker news is probably at hackernews.com (oops), etc.
Steam isn't at steam.com, but there also isn't a phishing site for steam at steam.com, and if there was you can bet that valve would do something about it.
Basically I'm trading Google/Bing and ads known to be malicious, for ICANN/registrars, self interested companies, and a reasonably functional "legal" system. Edit: And less tracking, and faster access to websites.
This was soon after the switch to battle.net and I may not have realized that the address was actually 'battle.net'. I don't remember. Honestly, I still search from time to time even when I know the address (didn't back then) because sometimes it's fast, and sometimes it's just muscle memory.
I know it's a tired point, but it nevertheless amuses me that someone would search for BattleNet. The name is literally the domain name: battle.net.