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First 'dotcom' celebrates 25th anniversary

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 15 Mar 2010 2:07 User comments (3)

First 'dotcom' celebrates 25th anniversary As of today, the first ever "dotcom" has celebrated its 25th birthday, an Internet landmark.
On March 15th, 1985 Symbolics computers purchased the first domain with a dotcom ending, becoming one of just 6 companies/individuals to do so in 1985. In 1997, the one millionth dotcom was registered, a number that has since exploded.

"This birthday is really significant because what we are celebrating here is the internet and dotcom is a good, well known placeholder for the rest of the internet," adds Mark Mclaughlin, Verisign CEO. Verisign is in charge of the entire dotcom domain. "Who would have guessed 25 years ago where the internet would be today. This really was a groundbreaking event."

In 2010, 668,000 dotcom sites are registered every month, and 57 million domain names were registered between the year 2000 and 2010. For the 15 years preceding it, only 21 million domain names were registered.

McLaughlin of Verisign also adds that it currently logs 53 billion requests for websites every day, and "we expect that to grow in 2020 to somewhere between three and four quadrillion."

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3 user comments

116.3.2010 16:41

Symbolics didn't buy a domain name 25 years ago. They were free. And Verisign (Network Solutions) was not involved. Those "features" came in the 1990s.

217.3.2010 01:05

And back then, a domain name was useless. To use a domain name, you needed a domain name server...and why bother setting up a domain name server when there were only 5 domain names?

318.3.2010 21:15

They wanted to be pioneers killerbug.

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