Register.com Article on .Com's 25th Birthday

Happy Birthday .Com - 25 Years Old!

Symbolics.com was the first .com registered on March 15, 1985 for the "world wide web." Today there are over 80 million .Com websites and the domain is a prominent feature of the internet.

Register.com is proud to be an integral part of the success of .Com. On April 21, 1999, ICANN announced that Register.com was one of the first five test bed registrars for the competitive Shared Registry System. On June 2nd 1999, Register.com was the first of the test bed registrars to begin operations as a registrar of .Com domain names. Since then, Register.com has registered millions of .com names for its customers.

The first .Com name registered by Register.com was SportsReporters.Com. We're proud to report that the owners of SportsReporters.Com are still loyal customers.

The economic impact of .Com has been quantified in a study by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). The ITIF found that the .Com domain serves as a platform for $400 billion in annual economic activity. .Com domain names drive more than $1.5 trillion in global annual economic activity, more than the global sales of medicine, investment in renewable energy, and government investment in R&D, combined. The ITIF estimates that the economic activity flowing across the .com infrastructure is likely to grow to $950 billion in annual revenue by 2020.

The .Com domain has defined a generation of innovation and entrepreneurism, serving as the launch pad for a new generation of companies that have transformed communications, commerce, entertainment and more.

"My young kids can’t fathom life without the internet. People above the age of 30 realize what a profound change the internet has had on human lives," said Jason Teichman, SVP, Marketing & Product Management. "Register.com is proud of the role we play in helping the Internet make a positive impact, especially for small businesses."

Did you know?

The most popular words among .com URL's today include "home" (1.2 million), "online" (1 million) and "land" (891,000).

The domain name system is used more than 1 trillion times per day... so in 1 second that is more than 20 million times.

Policy Impact Forum panelist and former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt said the .com domain has become a "common medium for humanity."

The second domain registered by Register.com was EagleCompany.Com

This article is brought to you Register.com Learning Resource Center for their Register.com Affiliate Program.