People seemed to prefer shorter domain names as far back as I can remember domain names. I always presumed that successful companies switched to a shorter name because they were better able to pay to acquire it from someone who had owned it since 1992 or whenever.

Yes, one company I worked for shortened their domain by buying it for €500k. Original owner of the domain never used it.

I can't remember what the original domain was now; I thought I knew but it's in use by a different company (and has been for ages, verified by Internet Archive), which kind of proves the point of the article.

This seems to generally be a byproduct of having more capital available to buy the shorter domains from squatters