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First dotcom domain names celebrate 25 year anniversary

Twenty five years ago the internet was in its infancy. The worldwide web was years away from becoming truly worldwide and available to the masses, web browsers were still nearly a decade away and search engines were not even a glint in their inventors’ eyes.

However significant events were taking place in Massachusetts.  Events which in their own small way, helped shaped the world as we know it today, with news quite literally at our fingertips.

On March 15th 1985, a computer systems firm called Symbolics, which made software based on MIT research, registered the first dotcom domain name “Symbolics.comz” with registration firm Network Solutions. 

Neither Symbolics nor Network Solutions exist independently any more and the event has been long forgotten. The founders of Symbolics do not even remember it taking place. However it sparked a global revolution, albeit one which would take a while to get going.

In the rest of 1985, there were only five more dotcom domain names registered. While most of the first 100 dotcoms created were for computer businesses, it took a while for the industry giants to become interested. Apple registered in February 1987 while Microsoft took until 1991 to buy theirs.

By 1992 there were still fewer than 15,000 dotcom domains compared to the 84 million that currently exist. Of these the majority are e-commerce and online business websites.

Dotcom actually nearly never happened at all. It was first thought up back in 1984 when ideas were being drawn up for commercial domains but initially .cor was the most popular.

The milestone is being celebrated by VeriSign, an internet security company which administers dotcom registration and acquired Network Solutions in 2000.

Ironically the 25th anniversary of dotcom comes just five days after the 10th anniversary of the dotcom bubble bursting.