Dot-com domain celebrates 25 anniversary

San Francisco, Mar 16: Having assisted in launching some of the pioneering and successful internet companies, the dot-com domain marked its 25 anniversary on Monday, Mar 15.

"For anyone under the age of 30, they probably don't remember when the Internet wasn't in their life. It's become such an essential part of how we work, live and play," said Mark McLaughlin, chief executive of Verisign, which administers the domain.

The dot-com address, registered in March 15, 1985, by Symbolics computer company of Cambridge, Massachusetts helped in launching companies like Yahoo.com, Amazon.com, Google.com and eBay.com, including fashion retail disasters like Boo.com and AOL.com.

From a mere registration of five companies in the opening year, it has now more than 80 million dot-com websites, including 11.9 million e-commerce and online business sites, 1.8 million sports-related sites, and 4.3 million entertainment websites.

An independent independent study cited by VeriSign claimed that they generate $400 billion a year and is expected to grow to $950 billion by 2020.

According to VeriSign, the most popular words used in domain names are home (1.2 million), online (one million), and land (891,000).

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