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25 Years of the .com gTLD

Posted by Soulskill on from the i'm-not-sure-where-to-send-the-hallmark-card dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The domain COM was installed as one of the first set of top-level domains when the Domain Name System was first implemented for use on the Internet in January 1985. The internet celebrates a landmark event on the 15th of March — the 25th anniversary of the day the first .com name was registered. Of the 250 million websites, there are over 80 million active .com sites. In March 1985, Symbolics computers of Cambridge, Massachusetts entered the history books with an internet address ending in .com (however, on 27 August 2009, it was sold to XF.com Investments). That same year another five companies jumped on a very slow bandwagon. Here is a list of the 100 oldest still-existing registered .com domains."

7 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. Re:No .. by Dilligent · · Score: 5, Informative

    No microsoft.com ?

    Microsoft didnae believe in the internet... it was not until the mid 90ies when they realised that it had taken off without them aboard.

  2. Re:No .. by Yvan256 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Microsoft thought the internet was a fad and that everybody would use a Microsoft-branded network (can't remember the name, it was similar to Compuserve or something). I remember having to install Trumpet or WinSocket or whatever the name was, just to add TCP/IP to Windows 3.11 so I could browse websites.

  3. Re:No .. by isorox · · Score: 3, Informative

    Microsoft thought the internet was a fad and that everybody would use a Microsoft-branded network (can't remember the name, it was similar to Compuserve or something

    The Microsoft Network - MSN - came with win95.

  4. Re:I knew it! by toastar · · Score: 4, Informative

    Stargate Information Systems continued to provide community service until 1988.

    I LESS THAN THREE the internet archive.

    http://web.archive.org/web/20001210223600/www.stargate.com/history.html

  5. Re:They should have kept the price high by qwijibo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Back in my day, we didn't have to pay for domains. They were free, you just set up a couple of name servers and emailed in a form. I remember sending uunet $50 back then, not for the domain, but for them to set up a couple of name servers to be authoritative for the domain. When I had my own machines on the net, I provided name servers for free so others could get domains without spending a penny.

  6. Re:mcc.com? by toastar · · Score: 3, Informative

    Who were they?

    http://web.archive.org/web/19970214020411/http://www.mcc.com/

    the internet archive rocks!

  7. Re:Why is Slashdot not a .com? by icebraining · · Score: 4, Informative

    I registered the domain name Slashdot.org as a joke. It was 'org' because I didn't want a .com -- those were so common. I always thought org would be cooler, and besides, I had no commercial plans in mind. (Years later this bit me on the ass since someone else registered the .com. Doh!) The URL was meant to be unpronounceable by anyone -- a joke ultimately that has backfired on me countless times when I'm called and asked what the URL is to the damn thing. Jeff 'Hemos' Bates (now a VP of something or other with SourceForge, Inc.) was in the living room when I was registering the domain name. We all wanted email addresses with a unique domain name that wasn't attached to our school, so he chipped in on the registration fee.

    A Brief History of Slashdot Part 1, Chips & Dips

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