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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."

18 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: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 .

  4. 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.

  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

  6. 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.

  7. 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.
  8. 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.

  9. 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.
  10. 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!

  11. 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.
  12. 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.

  13. 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
  14. 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.

  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.