I don't think it's the geeks who drove this. Godaddy's big ad purchases make it as synonymous with name-registration as Microsoft Word is to word-processing -- among those who don't deal with web setup on a regular basis.

My roommate, who after 10 years of using a Mac still doesn't know what a right-click is, has registered all of her domains through Godaddy (and guess who has to help maintain them...)