Ever since you probably got over the internet, you have seen different Top level domains (TLD) emerging. It all started with .COM then .COR, .NET, .ORG, .EDU .TV and then region specifics like .in, .ru, .fr, etc  and now even .xxx is in the talks.

It all began on March 15, 1985, a Massachusetts computer systems firm registered the first .com Internet domain name. It was  “Symbolics.com” and it fueled the .COM domains, the TLD that now makes up 70% of the web.

Today, exactly 25 years later, life B.C – Before .Com must be really strange.

Ironically, Symbolics, who are still running as Symbolics.com, should have been celebrating this day in the history but when contacted were not even aware. In the same year of symbolics.com, only six entities registered a .com, one of six top-level domain names created a year earlier in a reorganization of the early Internet’s naming bureaucracy. At the time, .cor (short for corporate) almost beat .com as the designation for commercial Internet addresses.

By 1992, there were around 15,000 .com domains were registered,  and today there are  84 million domain names, including 11.9 million e-commerce and online business sites, 4.3 million entertainment sites, 3.1 million finance-related sites and 1.8 million sports sites.

According to a study released today by the Information Technology & Information Foundation, the annual economic benefits of the commercial Internet equal $1.5 trillion, which is “more than the global sales of medicine, investment in renewable energy and government investment in R&D combined.”

Today, VeriSign claims 53 billion Website lookups every day.

A brief look at the First 10 .com domains:

1. Symbolics.com – March 15, 1985
2. BBN.com – April 24, 1985
3. Think.com – May 24, 1985
4. MCC.com – July 11, 1985
5. DEC.com – Sept. 30, 1985
6. Northrop.com – Nov. 7, 1985
7. Serox.com – Jan. 9, 1986
8. SRI.com – Jan. 17, 1986
9. HP.com – March 3, 1986
10. Bellcore.com – March 5, 1986

Source: iwhois

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