Agreed, this seems like a weird shortcoming on their part. Not clear how best to get the message to Google, though.

Google heard the message but apparently their data suggests otherwise: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Q... – which is really hard to believe in regards to .io domains.

Yeah, that's goofy. Nothing that Matt Cutts is saying in that video makes any sense at all with respect to .io.

Interesting, I wasn't aware of this.