> This is just making it easier for the average user to see the most important thing to them, which is the domain name. It's not like they're just changing stuff randomly.

Can you link to the user study or general cost/benefit analysis or something else saying it's not random? I'm having a hard time concluding that the cost of removing parts of a domain name only in some cases is outweighed by the benefit of removing a few characters from the user's address bar.