NEWS / WINDOWS

Dot-com Domain Marks 25th Anniversary

16 Mar, 2010, 12:58 pm IST | by IANS | Windows

The dot-com domain, which helped launch some of the most pioneering and successful internet companies, marked its 25th anniversary Monday.

'For anyone under the age of 30, they probably don't remember when the Internet wasn't in their life. It's become such an essential part of how we work, live and play,' said Mark McLaughlin, chief executive of Verisign, which administers the domain.

The first dot-com address was registered March 15, 1985, by Symbolics computer company of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Only five other companies registered that year, and it took until 1997 to attract one million addresses, as it became the launchpad of companies like Yahoo.com, Amazon.com, Google.com and eBay.com, as well as spectacular failures such as fashion retail disaster Boo.com and AOL.com.

There are now more than 80 million dot-com websites, including 11.9 million e-commerce and online business sites, 1.8 million sports-related sites, and 4.3 million entertainment websites.

In total they generate $400 billion a year, according to an independent study cited by Verisign. That figure is expected to grow to $950 billion by 2020.

The most popular words used in domain names are home (1.2 million), online (one million), and land (891,000), VeriSign said. 
RELATED STORIES

Windows 8 likely to support Adobe Flash

Windows 8 likely to support Adobe Flash

About eight months back, when Microsoft introduced its Windows 8 Metro UI, it was almost clear that the company’s Metro version........

Dell Latitude 10, first Windows 8 tablet shows up

Microsoft's programme to incubate 10 Indian start-ups in cloud computing

Giant radio telescope gets split location

Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime TF201 Review

Top 5 potential Gmail alternatives

Yahoo! Axis reportedly slowing down IE9

 

OPINIONS

Padmini Harchandrai

The latest "should they-shouldn't they" event with Facebook is the lift of the minimu...

MORE OPINIONS

Leaked Images, Availability, Pricing,
Specs, Pre-order

features

Top 5 free all-in-one messengers for Windows

Top 5 free all-in-one messengers for Windows

The number of instant messaging services have exploded, since the first...

By Rossi Fernandes

Project Darpan: Digitizing Indian local languages

Project Darpan: Digitizing Indian local languages

Compared to the relatively slow adoption rate of the traditional PC, that...

By Naina Khedekar

Top 10 tips for Internet Explorer 9

Top 10 tips for Internet Explorer 9

Microsoft’s browser Internet Explorer has been around a while and things

By Tech2

MORE FEATURES