Three of the oldest and most recognized
top level domain names (the part to the
right of the dot in a domain name) have
a long and storied history. How you
think of these domains when you see them
today isn’t necessarily the same as the
reasons that they were originally
created.
Back in 1985, before the World Wide Web
even existed, the domain names .Com,
.Net and .Org were created as three of
the original six generic top level
domain names. The other three domain
names—.mil, .gov and .edu—were not
available for registration by the
general public (and still are restricted
today).
Let’s take a look at the history of these
popular three domain name extensions.
.Com
There’s a bit of debate about whether
.com stands for company or
commercial. Keep in mind that,
back in 1985, people hadn’t considered
using the Internet for commerce. It was
more of a government and science
communication system.
Either way, .com became the de facto
extension for businesses and a catch-all
for any type of website once CERN’s Tim
Berners-Lee invented the Web in
1989. (You can still view
his historic first website,
launched in 1991, as archived by
w3.org.)
The very first .com domain claimed was
Symbolics.com. Other names registered in
1985 include BBN.com, Think.com,
DEC.com, MCC.com and Northrop.com.
Over the past 32 years, people and
companies have registered over 130
million .com domain names.
.Net
.Net is short for network. It was
originally created for companies
involved in networking, which is why a
lot of internet service providers and
technology companies started with a .net
domain name.
Nordic Infrastructure for Research &
Education registered the first .net
domain name, Nordu.net, in January 1985.
Now .net is a general purpose domain name
used by businesses and individuals
across the world, and there are about 15
million .net domain names registered.
.Org
Many people think of .org as a domain
name for nonprofits, but there are no
restrictions on who can register them.
They were originally created as an
alternative for non-commercial,
non-governmental companies, and anyone
can use a .org domain if it fits their
needs.
The domain .org is run Public Interest
Registry, which is part of the
non-profit organization Internet Society
(ISOC).
The first .org domain name registered was
Mitre.org in July 1985.
There are about 10 million .org domain
names registered.
Just Three of Many Choices
If you’re looking for a new domain name,
you have many options. You can stick
with the popular .org, .net, or .com
domain name, or choose from hundreds of
other options to fit every business and
lifestyle. Find your favorite free
domain that comes with Kyakabi Data
hosting packages here: https://data.kyakabi.com/web-hosting
