alt Hacker NewsThat's not exactly a great example, is it? "Barclay" even has a disambiguation page on Wikipedia, because it's a reasonably common Scottish surname.
For example, there used to be a Scottish company constructing steam locomotives which traded under the "Barclays & Co" name - because it was founded by one Andrew Barclay. There's also the Barclay Academy secondary school, and a Bentley dealer which until recently operated as Jack Barclay Ltd.
And that's just the UK ones! Barclays operates internationally, which means they want "barclays.com", so suddenly there's also Barclay-the-record-label, Barclay-the-cigarette-brand, Barclay-the-liquor-brand, Barclay College, golf tournament The Barclays, Barclays Center (whose naming rights were bought by the bank, but they of course want their own completely distinct website), Barclay Theatre, three Barclay Hotels.
Of course there's also all the stuff under "Barkley", "Barkly", "Berkley", and probably a dozen other variations just waiting to be used to scam dyslexic Barclays custumers.
Barclays used to operate under Barclays Bank PLC. IMO, if disambiguation was problematic online they would have reverted back to that name.
You bring up good points, but I don't think that company naming has to be 100% proof against confusion, it's just one more helpful thing for consumers to identify whom they are doing business with.
In the case of close names like "Barkley", if they're doing banking, there is probably a trademark case against if they actually use it to confuse customers.
Intrestingly enough, "Barkley Holdings" was registered by competing bank HSBC: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...