Oldest domains in the .com, .net, and .org TLDs • Hacker News Board

Re: Oldest domains in the .com, .net, and .org TLDs

#21

Post by pimlottc » Tue, Jun 26, 2018, 5:37 PM UTC

smhenderson wrote: post #13

rconti wrote: post #3

Lots of business and org names are acronyms, but it really stands out to me how most of the early ones are short. I guess in the age of excessively-long UUCP addresses, it was immediately obvious that short domain names would be preferable to longer ones.

The two letter domain names really stuck out to me. I had a boss ask me back in the early 2000's to register a two letter domain and I was surprised to find that Network Solutions would no longer do that. I didn't spend much time on it so maybe another registrar would but as far as I can remember two letter domains just weren't an option at the point. I guess TI, GE and HP were smart to grab them when they could!

I’m pretty sure every possible two letter combination was taken before that policy came out.

There used to be an old site that visualized the two- and three-letter domain name space as two- and three-dimensional grids. It was neat seeing the pixels fill in over time.

Re: Oldest domains in the .com, .net, and .org TLDs

#22

Post by reaperducer » Tue, Jun 26, 2018, 5:37 PM UTC

rconti wrote: post #3

Lots of business and org names are acronyms, but it really stands out to me how most of the early ones are short. I guess in the age of excessively-long UUCP addresses, it was immediately obvious that short domain names would be preferable to longer ones.

Makes sense since they were probably registered by the computer people, not the marketing people.

Back then (and to a lesser extent now), people tried to make commonly-typed commands as short as possible because keyboards were so beefy, and finger fatigue wasn't uncommon.

It's why the core Unix shell commands are things like "cp," instead of "copy."

Re: Oldest domains in the .com, .net, and .org TLDs

#23

Post by everdev » Tue, Jun 26, 2018, 5:38 PM UTC

invalidusernam3 wrote: post #8

Top 20: symbolics.com - Still exists bbn.com - Redirects to raytheon.com think.com - Dead mcc.com - Redirects to thecryptogenius.com (sometimes, not sure what's going on with it) dec.com - Redirects to paulkocher.com northrop.com - Dead xerox.com - Alive, Xerox website sri.com - Alive hp.com - Alive, HP website bellcore.com - Dead ibm.com - Alive, IBM website sun.com - Alive, sun website (oracle.com) intel.com - Aliv…

Funny that the 20th domain ever registered had a hyphen in it (bell-atl.com). They probably thought it would be easier to read than bellatl.com or bellatlantic.com

Re: Oldest domains in the .com, .net, and .org TLDs

#24

Post by rjsw » Tue, Jun 26, 2018, 5:39 PM UTC

verelo wrote: post #16

invalidusernam3 wrote: post #8

Top 20: symbolics.com - Still exists bbn.com - Redirects to raytheon.com think.com - Dead mcc.com - Redirects to thecryptogenius.com (sometimes, not sure what's going on with it) dec.com - Redirects to paulkocher.com northrop.com - Dead xerox.com - Alive, Xerox website sri.com - Alive hp.com - Alive, HP website bellcore.com - Dead ibm.com - Alive, IBM website sun.com - Alive, sun website (oracle.com) intel.com - Aliv…

I think we just took symbolics.com down. Doesn't load right now for me, i'm wondering how much traffic it normally sees.

The remains of real Symbolics are here [1].

[1] http://www.symbolics-dks.com/

Re: Oldest domains in the .com, .net, and .org TLDs

#25

Post by awb » Tue, Jun 26, 2018, 5:41 PM UTC

invalidusernam3 wrote: post #8

Top 20: symbolics.com - Still exists bbn.com - Redirects to raytheon.com think.com - Dead mcc.com - Redirects to thecryptogenius.com (sometimes, not sure what's going on with it) dec.com - Redirects to paulkocher.com northrop.com - Dead xerox.com - Alive, Xerox website sri.com - Alive hp.com - Alive, HP website bellcore.com - Dead ibm.com - Alive, IBM website sun.com - Alive, sun website (oracle.com) intel.com - Aliv…

Sad to see the current state of http://symbolics.com/ with a big "as seen on" section and all those social sharing buttons. It's like updating a historical center with shag carpeting and lava lamps.

Re: Oldest domains in the .com, .net, and .org TLDs

#26

Post by belic » Tue, Jun 26, 2018, 5:45 PM UTC

invalidusernam3 wrote: post #8

Top 20: symbolics.com - Still exists bbn.com - Redirects to raytheon.com think.com - Dead mcc.com - Redirects to thecryptogenius.com (sometimes, not sure what's going on with it) dec.com - Redirects to paulkocher.com northrop.com - Dead xerox.com - Alive, Xerox website sri.com - Alive hp.com - Alive, HP website bellcore.com - Dead ibm.com - Alive, IBM website sun.com - Alive, sun website (oracle.com) intel.com - Aliv…

the irony of think.com being a dead end street is strong.

Re: Oldest domains in the .com, .net, and .org TLDs

#27

Post by chrisacky » Tue, Jun 26, 2018, 5:46 PM UTC

What was registration fees back then? Why wouldn't people just squat on a bunch of two/three letter domains? Was it prohibitively difficult to register..

Re: Oldest domains in the .com, .net, and .org TLDs

#28

Post by belic » Tue, Jun 26, 2018, 5:47 PM UTC

verelo wrote: post #16

invalidusernam3 wrote: post #8

Top 20: symbolics.com - Still exists bbn.com - Redirects to raytheon.com think.com - Dead mcc.com - Redirects to thecryptogenius.com (sometimes, not sure what's going on with it) dec.com - Redirects to paulkocher.com northrop.com - Dead xerox.com - Alive, Xerox website sri.com - Alive hp.com - Alive, HP website bellcore.com - Dead ibm.com - Alive, IBM website sun.com - Alive, sun website (oracle.com) intel.com - Aliv…

I think we just took symbolics.com down. Doesn't load right now for me, i'm wondering how much traffic it normally sees.

Same here. We might have took down the old feller.

Re: Oldest domains in the .com, .net, and .org TLDs

#29

Post by smhenderson » Tue, Jun 26, 2018, 5:50 PM UTC

pimlottc wrote: post #21

smhenderson wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two letter domain names really stuck out to me. I had a boss ask me back in the early 2000's to register a two letter domain and I was surprised to find that Network Solutions would no longer do that. I didn't spend much time on it so maybe another registrar would but as far as I can remember two letter domains just weren't an option at the point. I guess TI, GE and HP were smart to grab them when they could!

I’m pretty sure every possible two letter combination was taken before that policy came out. There used to be an old site that visualized the two- and three-letter domain name space as two- and three-dimensional grids. It was neat seeing the pixels fill in over time.

Looks like you're right - from Wikipedia:

Two-letter .com domain names were never reserved. It was possible for anyone to register them in the very early years of the Internet (from 1985 to 1998). The first company to own an active Two Letter Domain is Hewlett-Packard. Since 1998 all permutations of the 26 × 26 = 676 .com domains have been registered and (barring the very unlikely event of a lapse in registration) they can only be obtained by buying them from the previous owner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-letter_second-level_dom...

Re: Oldest domains in the .com, .net, and .org TLDs

#30

Post by ant6n » Tue, Jun 26, 2018, 5:55 PM UTC

chrisacky wrote: post #27

What was registration fees back then? Why wouldn't people just squat on a bunch of two/three letter domains? Was it prohibitively difficult to register..

Nobody saw a value in domain names. People didn't think we'd run out of domains. People didn't think that the internet would become mainstream, or that it would continue to exist in that form for a long time.