I’m late to this thread after a day off, so I know you’ve already touched on some of these things, but let me circle back a little and mention a few things that might not immediately be obvious for newcomers, and also give you my perspective on solutions to the OP’s concerns.
First off the Name Resolution System (NRS) for the Safe Network, as it’s currently proposed, works slightly differently from the clearnet, in that there are no TLDs. If you own the Public Name, e.g. google then you can create as many subnames on the front as you want search.google real.google safe.google etc.
So if a scammer wanted to try and phish by mimicking a clearnet site, then they’d probably want to snag Public Name that replicates a TLD, e.g. com net gov etc.
So if MaidSafe were to pre-register anything, it would likely be to snag all the existing Ican TLDs, and maybe just lock them out for good. Although once new TLDs are introduced on the clearnet, the issue crops up again.
This is how the NRS works at the moment. However, to take you into another parallel discussion there is another proposal that it works differently, addressing other UX issues, which I would favour.
If we go down that path then the issue around pre-registering Public Names for brands comes up again. But to me, this goes against the grain of creating a permissionless decentralised internet, creating a form of centralised authority from the off. And there would be a lot of burden and risk for MaidSafe to administer this… how do we authenticate people, what if there are disputes, do we turn into ICANN?
It’s just got a bit of a bad smell about it to me.
But hold on!
The Safe Network has got a bunch more tricks up its sleeve when it comes to getting a user to the right content, namely Linked Data.
A site you visit, or any name you put in the browser, will have a bunch more information surrounding it than simply the URL. It will have a SafeID profile, a history, and other metadata which can be socially linked; so if a bunch of my friends, or a certain group I associate with, or a list I subscribe to, are comfortable visiting and using the site, then I can feel safe doing so too.
This can also allow the flexibility for a Pet Naming system down the line too, socially powered. So if most people, or all my friends, call a site google then that’s what it’s called, and what I can type in the address bar.
So really, a URL is only one element of what makes a site findable, and verifiable, and it may not even be the predominant one.
(if you’ve got the time for it there is a mega thread over here, that discusses many of these issues and ideas too).