Dot-com domain marks 25th anniversary

March 16, 2010 04:44 pm | Updated 04:44 pm IST - San Francisco

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

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

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 on March 15, 1985, by Symbolics computer company of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Only five other companies registered that year, and it took until 1997 to attract 1 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 dollars a year, according to an independent study cited by Verisign. That figure is expected to grow to 950 billion dollars by 2020.

The most popular words used in domain names are home (1.2 million), online (1 million), and land (891,000), VeriSign said.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.