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Oldest Domain Names

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Re: Oldest Domain Names

#41

Post by alextingle »

jere wrote: post #38

I had no clue domains were available before I was born... that's quite a strange thought. For some reason, I was thinking they wouldn't have been around before the web. A dumb question, but what exactly would you do with a domain name before 1990? Email is all I can think of.

The web is just port 80 (& 443). There are 65533 other ports out there, not to speak of whole other protocols such as UDP - what are they used for?

Just look at the first dozen or so lines of /etc/services and you'll get a very good picture of what services were important in the early Internet.

Re: Oldest Domain Names

#42

Post by jonnathanson »

ethomson wrote: post #35
jonnathanson wrote: post #10

How many of these have been in continuous ownership since first being registered? I'm sure quite a few of them have, but I'd be curious. (For example, I'd have a hard time believing that "Marble.com" is the same entity today that it was 30 years ago, and WhoIs info goes back only so far).

Interesting question. I'm relatively certain that cayman.com, for example, was Cayman Systems, so that has obviously turned over. But many of these companies (and thus, domains) have simply been acquired. SCO.com was SCO who was once a legitimate company. kai.com was Kuck and Associates, acquired by Intel's compiler group several years ago. The big surprise to me is that they're not all just tech companies. In a sea…

"The big surprise to me is that they're not all just tech companies. In a sea of domain names that built the internet sits... Alcoa!?"

Yeah, Alcoa is an interesting case. On the surface, one wonders why an aluminum manufacturer would be on the early domains list. But Alcoa has been (and still is?) in the fabrication business for a wide range of industrial uses: aerospace, defense, etc. Since the early internet was largely subsidized by the military-industrial complex, it makes some sense that a major supplier would be early on the bandwagon.

That's just a guess, though. I have no particular knowledge of why Alcoa was there early.

Re: Oldest Domain Names

#43

Post by alextingle »

pjvds wrote: post #5
TwistedWeasel wrote: post #4

No Microsoft.com? Late to the party?

Indeed, interesting to known why. The domain came online at May 2, 1991.

Microsoft have always been followers, not leaders. The Internet was just a curiosity, of interest mainly to academics before the early 90s.

Re: Oldest Domain Names

#44

Post by epc »

jere wrote: post #38

I had no clue domains were available before I was born... that's quite a strange thought. For some reason, I was thinking they wouldn't have been around before the web. A dumb question, but what exactly would you do with a domain name before 1990? Email is all I can think of.

email, file transfers, netnews (usenet). X-Windows and Andrew started mid-1980s. AFS relied on DNS to figure out where cellservers were. Gopher started 1989-1990. ftp was in wide use. There was a lot of activity on the Internet well before the web started. Tiny compared to today of course.

Re: Oldest Domain Names

#45

Post by hansjorg »

footpath wrote: post #12
crazygringo wrote: post #8

Wait, every single name here is a .com. I thought the Internet was non-commercial at first -- where are the .edu, .org, etc.? Did those not come until later, or is this list restricted?

Those can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_oldest_currently_r...

> The web site for NORDUNet, nordu.net, is the oldest active domain name. It was registered on January 1, 1985.

Re: Oldest Domain Names

#46

Post by stormbrew »

columbo wrote: post #31
kilroy123 wrote: post #29

Why was stargate.com registered in August 5, 1986, and what was that for? The movie and show didn't come out for another 9-10 years.

It's a pretty common sci-fi term and books have been named it as early as 1958. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_(disambiguation)?1=1

The most notable use that comes to mind for me is that in the 2001: A Space Odyssey book the monolith around Saturn is called a stargate.

Re: Oldest Domain Names

#48

Post by rhplus »

jonnathanson wrote: post #42
ethomson wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting question. I'm relatively certain that cayman.com, for example, was Cayman Systems, so that has obviously turned over. But many of these companies (and thus, domains) have simply been acquired. SCO.com was SCO who was once a legitimate company. kai.com was Kuck and Associates, acquired by Intel's compiler group several years ago. The big surprise to me is that they're not all just tech companies. In a sea…

"The big surprise to me is that they're not all just tech companies. In a sea of domain names that built the internet sits... Alcoa!?" Yeah, Alcoa is an interesting case. On the surface, one wonders why an aluminum manufacturer would be on the early domains list. But Alcoa has been (and still is?) in the fabrication business for a wide range of industrial uses: aerospace, defense, etc. Since the early internet was la…

If your business feeds a global commodities market, then you're probably going to want some advanced telecoms to keep up with pricing, supply chains, and all those mines and processing plants in far flung corners of the globe.

Re: Oldest Domain Names

#49

Post by blumkvist »

cmbaus wrote: post #33

Seeing Adobe as one of the oldest domain names is disappointing. They were perfectly positioned to take advantage of the growth of they internet, but were never able to capitalize. The company has really stagnated in the past 15 years.

huh? From where I'm sitting adobe looks strong as fuck. Advertising, analytics, publishing. They don't have CRM (yet), but it seems like a very strong b2b company to me.
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