Dot Com Turns 25: How Failure Turned to Success
Dot Com Turns 25: How Failure Turned to Success
By Sean Michael Kerner on March 15, 2010 8:55 AM
From the 'Significant Internet Milestones' files:
The very first dot com domain symbolics.com was registered 25 years ago today on March 15, 1985. From that event a quarter century ago, there are now over 192 million total domain name registrations, with some 96.7 million domain names that are registered as dot com or dot net.
What's important to note about the 25 year milestone in my view is not the success of dot com, but rather its failure.
Remember back in 1985 there was no such thing as the web as we know it today and there was no such thing as the web browser either. Gopher and FTP were available but neither of those services are really what makes the Internet the global phenomenon that we all know today.
Simply having a domain name system and the generic dot com top level domain (TLD) was a start to the modern Internet era but on its own delivered little value to the masses.
To be sure, with domain names users of the nascent Internet could move beyond typing in IP addresses in order to access whatever service might have been available and that definitely was a convenience. With a domain name it masks the complexity of the underlying IP system to users and allows for the scalability and simplicity that the web 10 years after the first dot com was registered - would really demand.
The success of dot com is that it was first and became the brand for the Web. For that reason dot com owes its success not to its own birth 25 years ago but rather to Tim Berners-Lee with the Web and Marc Andreeson with the web browser.
The fact that the first dot com was registered 25 years ago is an interesting trivia question in my view, but it's important to remember that dot com on its own back in 1985 wasn't a runaway success.
The domain system which dot com leads to this day in terms of total domains registered is an enabling technology and an important one. It was the evolution of the broader Internet space that made dot com successful.
Source: Internet News
By Sean Michael Kerner on March 15, 2010 8:55 AM
From the 'Significant Internet Milestones' files:
The very first dot com domain symbolics.com was registered 25 years ago today on March 15, 1985. From that event a quarter century ago, there are now over 192 million total domain name registrations, with some 96.7 million domain names that are registered as dot com or dot net.
What's important to note about the 25 year milestone in my view is not the success of dot com, but rather its failure.
Remember back in 1985 there was no such thing as the web as we know it today and there was no such thing as the web browser either. Gopher and FTP were available but neither of those services are really what makes the Internet the global phenomenon that we all know today.
Simply having a domain name system and the generic dot com top level domain (TLD) was a start to the modern Internet era but on its own delivered little value to the masses.
To be sure, with domain names users of the nascent Internet could move beyond typing in IP addresses in order to access whatever service might have been available and that definitely was a convenience. With a domain name it masks the complexity of the underlying IP system to users and allows for the scalability and simplicity that the web 10 years after the first dot com was registered - would really demand.
The success of dot com is that it was first and became the brand for the Web. For that reason dot com owes its success not to its own birth 25 years ago but rather to Tim Berners-Lee with the Web and Marc Andreeson with the web browser.
The fact that the first dot com was registered 25 years ago is an interesting trivia question in my view, but it's important to remember that dot com on its own back in 1985 wasn't a runaway success.
The domain system which dot com leads to this day in terms of total domains registered is an enabling technology and an important one. It was the evolution of the broader Internet space that made dot com successful.
Source: Internet News
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