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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."

33 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. No .. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    No microsoft.com ?

    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:No .. by W3bbo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Not quite so true, I'm afraid.

      Whilst Microsoft was late to the party (we're talking early-1990s) they never had the impression they could supplant the Internet with something proprietary.

      The "Walled Gardens" of the 1990s (AOL, CompuServe, The Microsoft Network, etc) were just value-added content layers on top of services provided by the Internet and all included access to the World Wide Web.

      So basically MSN (the original one) was Microsoft's competitor to AOL and not "The Internet".

      Microsoft didn't include TCP/IP in early versions of Windows because there just wasn't any demand, and third-parties were already making their own add-ons that provided this. Much the same reason IPv6 wasn't added to Windows until Vista even though IPv6's specifications were stable enough by the release of XP SP2 in 2005. I'm sure they had better things at the time for their developers to work on.

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

      Domain Name.......... microsoft.com, Creation Date........ 1991-05-02

    6. Re:No .. by nxtw · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The "Walled Gardens" of the 1990s (AOL, CompuServe, The Microsoft Network, etc) were just value-added content layers on top of services provided by the Internet and all included access to the World Wide Web.

      Except for perhaps MSN, these services included access to only parts of the Internet. CompuServe added Internet email access earlier than the others in 1989, and AOL added Usenet in 1993. Prodigy added a web browser (no sockets support) in 1994.

      I don't think these services started offering real Internet (with TCP sockets support) until after the release of Windows 95.

      Much the same reason IPv6 wasn't added to Windows until Vista even though IPv6's specifications were stable enough by the release of XP SP2 in 2005.

      IPv6 wasn't enabled by default until Vista, but was included with XP from the beginning. (The version included with the original XP release was included as an unsupported preview.) MS also released experimental IPv6 implementations for NT4 and 2000.

    7. Re:No .. by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 2, Informative

      The "Walled Gardens" of the 1990s (AOL, CompuServe, The Microsoft Network, etc) were just value-added content layers on top of services provided by the Internet

      No, they weren't. AOL and CompuServe, and most of the other online services (not sure about MSN) ran their own proprietary networks, using non-IP protocols.

      and all included access to the World Wide Web.

      Eventually, yes, but they didn't start out doing that. They all wanted to be The Future Of Online Services, and hoped the internet would go away quietly, or at least stay restricted to educational and government use.

      --
      The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
    8. Re:No .. by digitalcowboy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The "Walled Gardens" of the 1990s (AOL, CompuServe, The Microsoft Network, etc) were just value-added content layers on top of services provided by the Internet and all included access to the World Wide Web.

      I'm not sure if you're wrong about this or I've misunderstood what you're trying to say. But (unfortunately) I wasted a couple months in the mid 90's doing (outsourced) tech support for CompuServe, after first discovering it on a Commodore VIC-20 in 1981 with a 300 baud "coupler" style modem that required a telephone handset to be firmly inserted.

      I suspect you're not wrong, just imprecise and I'm being pedantic. However, in the 90's, CompuServe was dying a slow death trying to keep a proprietary hold on something that had become an open commodity. You're correct that at that point it had become a "value-added content [layer] on top of services provided by the Internet and ... included access to the World Wide Web."

      It didn't start out that way and pre-dated any public access to the internet by more than a decade. AOL came later as well as Prodigy and Apple's failed attempt at e-something or other. (eWorld? I'm too old to remember and too lazy to check it.)

      None of them adapted well to the rapidly changing landscape. What's more, when I was doing tech support for CS, it was owned by H&R Block. I joined in February and as tax day approached our internal network slowed to a crawl - as in: click a button on the internal ticket system and wait literally 5 minutes for a response over the WAN. It seems H&R bought the company for the physical network because they only needed it for a few months a year. As with most parasites, they quickly managed to kill the host. (My "supervisors" kept saying, "Hang in there until April 16th and everything'll be back to normal.")

      Not that the internet wouldn't have killed CS anyway, but the short-sightedness was amazing.

      Now then. About my lawn and your presence on it...

  2. Re:tomato by toastar · · Score: 4, Funny

    tomato

    But It's pronounced tomato!

  3. They should have kept the price high by Jazz-Masta · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When it was only InterNIC assigning domain names, it was $100/year, and then $70/year. I remember carefully choosing which domains to register - and so did everyone else. There were very few squatters back then.

    I believe passing the torch to ICANN, and then having GoDaddy (Wild West) pop up offering $6 .COM will be remembered as the ruin of the Internet. Not to mention the 2-3 day "evaluation" period where squatters could hold a domain without paying for it.

    Now they've opened up .CO (Columbian) for non-Columbian registration. Pre-registration is $299, and the registrars are trying to push it as the next big TLD.

    1. 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.

    2. Re:They should have kept the price high by MrCawfee · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Godaddy had the 9.95 price point when their competition was ~25/yr, and it wasn't immediate. .CO is the .new .CM. I work at a registrar and almost all of our .CM registrations tend to be screened out using fake credit cards. Even after it goes live and the price point for .CO is probally going to be ~60/yr, that is still too expensive for the "legitimate" squatter to put up their advertising pages. Judging from the .CM registrations at my company that got through the screening process, they tend to be deleted within a few months when the credit card dispute comes through. The registry doesn't care because they have already gotten their registration fee. I'd say that atleast 50% of our .CM registrations are screened out as fraud automatically, and the remainder are a mix between companies trying for brand protection and fraud. .CO will never be a big legitimate tld, my feeling is that you are going to see:
          a) .CO domains parked or forwarded by legitimate users for brand protection
          b) .CO domains parked by the registrar due to a chargeback so they can get atleast some of the money they lost back.
          c) .CO domains parked by the client until the company that owns the name goes through the dispute process.

      Bad thing for the internet, good thing for Columbia, good for .

    3. Re:They should have kept the price high by HaeMaker · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I don't remember it being $100. When I registered hae.com, it was $30 one time to my ISP (InterNIC didn't charge) to setup the domain, DNS, and sendmail. Other ISPs charged per month to maintain the domain, so it was a good deal. This was back in the mid 90s when it was fashionable to get a "vanity plate" domain.

    4. Re:They should have kept the price high by Ron+Atkinson · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I don't remember it ever being $100, you probably paid for 2 years. When I got my first domain name in the early 90's before the commercialization of the Internet domain name registration was free. I had my name for a couple of years at no charge (also had a class C subnet assigned to me, which I turned back in last year to ARIN). After the InterNIC transferred from SRI over to Network Solutions (think it was 1994 or so), and the Internet became commercial, the government decided to charge $50 for domain names in which $35 went to Network Solutions and $15 to the U.S. Government. After I think 2 years or so it was determined that the $15 could be considered an illegal tax, so that was revoked leaving the standard $35 Network Solutions fee.

      I also agree that the downfall of the domain name registration was when it was passed to ICANN. People may have complained about the $35, but we didn't have squatters and people hijacking names just because someone forgot to "pay the bill".

  4. Interesting and maybe humbling by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I felt a bit old, and maybe a bit humbled, to see a number of smallish Pacific Northwest companies that are on that list but no longer exist. When I first got out of college I'd interviewed at some of those places!

    --
    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re:Interesting and maybe humbling by frank_adrian314159 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Which ones are you talking about? Both Fluke and Tektronix still exist (though the latter not in its former glory) and Boeing was still in business last time I checked (albeit with HQ now in Chicago). As is Mentor Graphics, etc., etc. And I've actually worked for a couple of those...

      --
      That is all.
    2. Re:Interesting and maybe humbling by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The two that immediately jumped out at me were Teltone and Data I/O. Technically both still exist; but after buyouts, bankruptcies, and acquisitions I don't believe either one has anything to do with the original companies other than some continuity of legal rights to the names. I had an internship at Teltone way back in the early 80s.

      I don't think of Fluke nor Tektronix as being smallish, really - although I realize compared to ATT or IBM they are. And Boeing is huge by almost any standard.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
  5. I knew it! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    25. 05-Aug-1986 STARGATE.COM

    This precedes the movie by 8 years. Do you know what that means? It's all real! I knew it! I am so getting myself an F-302. Cheyenne Mountain, here I come.

    1. 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

    2. Re:I knew it! by ImprovOmega · · Score: 2, Informative

      <3 is the code that you're looking for: <3

  6. Fanboyism by Yvanhoe · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Apple is there.
    Microsoft is not.

    --
    The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
    1. Re:Fanboyism by tlhIngan · · Score: 2, Informative

      Apple is there.
      Microsoft is not.

      Microsoft's site was registered sometime in the early 90's, as a test site for the Windows TCP/IP stack. Back in the days when you had to use Trumpet Winsock to connect, prior to Windows 95 (which came with Microsoft's Winsock stack). Of course, it had to be prepped for Win95's launch, but until then, it was really just test servers. It only went "live" after another Microsoft employee testing TCP/IP found it was live and traced it down the hall.

      http://www.microsoft.com/misc/features/features_flshbk.htm

  7. Alcoa is 40th oldest?! by jschen · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I find it surprising that Alcoa is so high up the list, beating out big computer and communications tech names such as AMD, 3COM, Apple, and Cisco. I'm curious as to what compelled them to register a domain name way back in Nov 1986.

  8. When I started out by idontgno · · Score: 4, Funny

    "DNS" was a "HOSTS.TXT" file FTP'd down from ISI.

    Now stop doing zone transfers across my lawn, you punks!

    --
    Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
  9. 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!

  10. Stock performance by bobdotorg · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm curious how the publicly traded stocks of the early adopters fared from time of registration until the peak of the dotcom bubble in March 2000. I suspect abnormally high returns relative to Nasdaq or the S&P500.

    --
    __ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
  11. Why is Slashdot not a .com? by mister_playboy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This story makes me wonder... does anyone know why /. is a .org and not a .com?

    --
    Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law ::: Love is the law, love under will
    1. 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

      --
      Dilbert RSS feed
  12. stats are wrong by darthcamaro · · Score: 2, Informative

    the people that put on this study have some wrong stats. According to VeriSign's own data there are just over 192 million domain names registered now. No idea where that figure of 250 million came from but it's not correct.

  13. See What's New in Microsoft Publisher 97!! by ArundelCastle · · Score: 4, Funny

    Earliest WayBack Machine entry for MS:
    http://web.archive.org/web/19961020014044/http://www.microsoft.com/

    The thing that makes me laugh most about this slice of history is the footer link to /MISC/CPYRIGHT.HTM
    I bet they still have some of those 8.3s kicking around.

  14. Northrup == oldest surviving? by kclittle · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Looking at that oldest-100 list, it would appear that Northrup is the oldest surviving ".COM" TLD (they were the acquirer in the Grumman deal).
    Ah, DEC, we knew ye well...

    --
    Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
  15. Re:tomato by baka_toroi · · Score: 3, Funny

    A British guy told me off today because I said "to-mate-oh" instead of "to-mah-to." (English is not my native language)
    He's such a cigarette.