Dotcom TLD Reaches 25th Anniversary

The Dotcom domain name will celebrate its 25th birthday today, as computer maker Symbolics was the first company in the world to adopt the domain name on 15th March 1985.

Although its rise to popularity was slow, the Dotcom top level domain now registers 680,000 web sites every month.

The same year in Symbolics adopted the web address, five other companies had decided to go with Dotcom, which was to register its millionth user in 1997, during the internet boom.

The web address has come a long way since then and has become quasi synonymous with the World Wide Web.

Commenting on the silver anniversary of the domain name, Mark Mclaughlin, chief executive officer of Verisign, the company which manages the Dotcom TLD, said in a statement to BBC that “This birthday is really significant because what we are celebrating here is the internet and dotcom is a well known placeholder for the rest of the internet. Who would have guessed 25 years ago where the internet would be today.”

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Interestingly, seasoned web experts believe that the domain name owes its massive popularity to Netscape's Mosaic web browser that had attracted a plethora of consumers and businesses to the World Wide Web.

Our Comments
Can't believe that it's already 25 years since the first domain dotcom name has been registered. Some of these have exchanged hands for millions of dollars while others, Like Facebook, Wikipedia, Yahoo or Google have risen from obscurity to become household names.

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