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Happy 25th Birthday 'Dot Com': A Look Back

The first dot-com registered this week in 1985 -- revisit the histories of the first five domains registered

By Ian Paul, PC World
March 15, 2010 09:11 PM ET
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The Internet is filled with nostalgia on Monday as geeks all over the world celebrate the 25th anniversary of the registration of the first dot-com domain. On March 15, 1985, a small Massachusetts-based computer manufacturer Symbolics, Inc. registered Symbolics.com. It would be more than a month before the second dot-com was registered, and there wouldn't be 100 registered dot-coms until November 30, 1987.

How times have changed. Today, there are 668,000 dot-coms registered every month, according to the BBC. Current top Internet properties include names like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook and eBay--none of which were registered until the 1990s.

2010's geekiest 25th anniversaries  

On this historic anniversary of the first ever registered dot-com domain, let's take a trip back and revisit the histories of the first five domains ever registered, plus the story of what is arguably the most notorious dot-com ever.

Want more domain name history? Check out The Internet's Oldest Dot-com Domain Names.

Connect with Ian on Twitter (@ianpaul) or on Google Buzz.

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Originally published on www.pcworld.com. Click here to read the original story.

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