10 Little-known facts about .com

Internet's most popular domain name dotcom (.com) has turned 25! The domain of Internet's most successful companies Google, eBay, Amazon has through the years shaped World Wide Web what it is today.

Short for 'commercial', the .com extension was initially intended to be used for ecommerce websites. However, over the years, the domain has been in use for any and every type of site, from business to blogs to personal websites.

As the .com celebrates its 25th birthday, here are 10 interesting facts about the domain.

 
First .com
 
Twenty five years ago, on March 15, 1985, the first commercial dotcom company Symbolics.com was born. It was one of the six dotcoms registered in 1985.

In 2009, Symbolics.com was sold to XF.com Investments. The current Symbolics web site is available at symbolics-dks.com. XF.com is a commercial real estate and investment site.

 
cor not .com
 
 
Before the domain name .com was finalised, .cor was the top runner for corporation names. The .com was originally administered by the United States Department of Defense, but is today operated by VeriSign.

 
.com count
 
 
Any guesses on the number of .coms today? Of the current 250 million websites, a whopping 80 million are .coms.

Between 1985 and 2000, over 21 million domain names were registered. 57 million domain names were registered between 2000 and 2010. The .com domain initially saw a slow pick up with mere 100 .com domain names registered two and a half years after the first .com was registered.

During Internet boom in 1997, .com count reached the one millionth number.
 

Dotcom bust in 2000? Not really!
 
 
You thought dotcom bust of 2000, which saw large number of dotcoms of all sizes crumbling like nine pins, stole the domain's scorching growth march? Not really! In the year 2000 too, the number of dotcoms grew by a monthly average of 668,000 globally.
 

Longest single-word .com
 
 
Ever wondered which is the .com with the longest name? It is: http://www.llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyll-llantysiliogogogoch.com. The domain name belongs to a Welsh village.
 

Most expensive .com
 
 
Which is the world's most expensive .com? No, it is not sex.com despite the huge number of takers for porns on Internet. The world's most expensive .com is insure.com. In 2009, the site was bought for a whopping $16 million by QuintStreet. Presently, the site offers life insurance, auto insurance, health insurance and other policies.

Before 2009, sex.com held the title for the world's most expensive .com domain having got sold for $14 million in 2006. At No 3 & 4 are Fund.com, which got sold for $9.99 million in 2008 and Porn.com, which got sold for $9.5 million in 2007.
 

Most popular .coms
 
 
The most popular words used in domain names are home (1.2 million), online (one million), and land (891,000), according to VeriSign.

Today, nearly 53 billion requests for websites including .com are logged every day.

First 10 .com domains
 
 
World's first ten dotcom names were sold between March 1985 to March 1986. Below are the top ten in order...

Symbolics.com (March 15, 1985), BBN.com (April 24, 1985), Think.com (May 24, 1985), MCC.com (July 11, 1985), DEC.com (Sept. 30, 1985), Northrop.com (Nov. 7, 1985), Serox.com (Jan. 9, 1986), SRI.com (Jan. 17, 1986), HP.com (March 3, 1986) and Bellcore.com (March 5, 1986).
 

Business size
 
 
According to a new ITIF study, the dotcom domain has become the platform for $400 billion in annual economic activity, a number that is expected to rise to $950 billion by 2020. 
 

No. of sites
 

E-com has been one of the major driving force in the popularity of dotcom. According to the report, 11.9 million are e-commerce and online business sites, 4.3 million are entertainment sites and there are 3.1 million finance-related sites and 1.8 million sports sites.