{"id":2358,"date":"2010-03-15T19:44:59","date_gmt":"2010-03-15T23:44:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rbach.net\/blog\/?p=2358"},"modified":"2022-12-30T12:46:01","modified_gmt":"2022-12-30T17:46:01","slug":"happy-birthday-dot-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/happy-birthday-dot-com\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday Dot Com"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Happy<\/a>March 15, 2010, is the 25th anniversary of the first .com name registration. Symbolics Computers of Cambridge, MA registered the first Internet address ending in dot com symbolics.com<\/a> in 1985. The website Geekosystem<\/a><\/em> says<\/a> symbolics.com\u00a0was launched by the computer manufacturer Symbolics, Inc., which was a spin-off from MIT\u2019s<\/a> AI Lab.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The company went bankrupt in the mid-\u201990s (but not before their graphics division helped animate the orca in Free Willy<\/a>)<\/em>, and was sold<\/a> in 2009 to a domain name investment company, XF Investments<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mark McLaughlin, CEO of Verisign, told BBC News, “This birthday is really significant because what we are celebrating here is the Internet, and .com is a good, well-known placeholder for the rest of the Internet<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The BBC<\/a> article<\/a> says it is unlikely that the early dot com’s were thought of as businesses as the early internet was not seen as a place for commerce but rather as a platform for governmental and educational bodies to trade ideas. It took until 1997, well into the internet boom, before the one millionth .com was registered.<\/p>\n

“Who would have guessed 25 years ago where the internet would be today. This really was a groundbreaking event,” McLaughlin said, “with 668,000 dot com sites registered every month, they have become part of the fabric of our lives<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

\"symbolics<\/a>An estimated 1.7 billion people – one-quarter of the world’s population – now use the internet. Verisign’s McLaughlin only sees that figure growing over the next quarter of a century. “I think that the way we access information today, mostly still through PCs and laptops is highly likely to change; that the voice will be more important than text input<\/em>.” He continues, “I think the whole fabric of how we access, search, find and get information is going to be radically different.<\/em>”<\/p>\n

The BBC reports that Verisign, which is responsible for looking after the .com domain, currently logs 53 billion requests for websites – not just .coms – every day, and Mr. McLaughlin told BBC News, “We expect that to grow in 2020 to somewhere between three and four quadrillions (1 quadrillion is 1,000 billion).<\/em>”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ralph Bach<\/a>\u00a0has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his\u00a0Bach Seat<\/a> about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn<\/a>,\u00a0Facebook<\/a>,\u00a0and\u00a0Twitter<\/a>. Email the Bach Seat\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

March 15, 2010, marks the 25th anniversary of the first registered dot com name by now-defunct Symbolics of Cambridge, MA for symbolics.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[3240,161,2587,160,47,3298,2586],"class_list":["post-2358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fun","tag-3240","tag-birthday","tag-domain-name","tag-dotcom","tag-fun","tag-symbolics","tag-top-level-domain"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t