The Domain Industry needs an enema. I would like to see all
those old free domains, that aren't trademarks, or being used
actively raffled off--and not to the highest bidder. Just
an old fashioned raffle to anyone who owns a website.
Oldest Domain Names
51–60 of 66 posts
Re: Oldest Domain Names
#52This is actually correct only for .com. There are other extensions with old "domain names" (Like .edu .org .mil etc.)
For example berkeley.edu dates to 1985 as does harvard.edu, mit.edu etc.
Domain Name: BERKELEY.EDU
Registrar: EDUCAUSE
Whois Server: whois.educause.net
Referral URL: http://www.educause.edu/edudomain
Name Server: ADNS1.BERKELEY.EDU
Name Server: ADNS2.BERKELEY.EDU
Name Server: AODNS1.BERKELEY.EDU
Name Server: AODNS2.BERKELEY.EDU
Name Server: NS.V6.BERKELEY.EDU
Name Server: PHLOEM.UOREGON.EDU
Name Server: SNS-PB.ISC.ORG
Status: ok
Updated Date: 28-may-2013
Creation Date: 24-apr-1985
Expiration Date: 24-apr-2014
So a domain registered at the start (say http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1591.txt by Jon Postel) that was dropped and re-registered would reflect the newer date.
So this is more accurately "100 Oldest continuously registered .com domain names". (Note it also doesn't take into account ownership changes)
Re: Oldest Domain Names
#53http://symbolics.com/ is just absolutely absurd now. Audi and Atari advertising next to a work from home scam, a domain name lawyer, a religious university, and a smattering of other random entities. Somewhat ironically the first domain now just reflects the absolute nature of of the web itself.
What bothers you about that exactly?
(I know the owner of that domain and he's actually a nice honorable guy).
He paid for it in order to have the first (per my other comment) domain. What do you think should happen a plaque be put on it as is done with important physical real estate?
Re: Oldest Domain Names
#54I 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.
"The web is just port 80"
That's actually a really good important point.
Most people wrongly equate a domain not having a web page at port 80 with "it's not being used".
Re: Oldest Domain Names
#55No Microsoft.com? Late to the party?
Microsoft took quite a while to start paying attention to this hippie / academic Internet thing. They were pretty late to the party.
Of course, when they decided to release "Internet Explorer for Unix" (IIRC, for SunOS and HPUX) in about 1997, coming late didn't prevent them from marketing it with a widely ridiculed phrase along the lines of "Bringing the Internet to Unix".
Re: Oldest Domain Names
#56Wow. Just at a glance, three minicomputer companies that have since vanished: DEC, DG, Prime. On the UNIX side, Sun and SCO, for mainframes Amdahl. But I remember well downloading stuff from gatekeeper.dec.com.
> But I remember well downloading stuff from gatekeeper.dec.com.
Wow, you just gave my flashbacks... metalab, sunsite, ftp.cdrom.com, ...
And not sure why this one just popped into my mind as it's totally unrelated to any of those: the Internet Oracle http://cgi.cs.indiana.edu/~oracle/index.cgi
Re: Oldest Domain Names
#57"Domain names have been actually been available for 28 years – yes, before you even knew what a computer looked like." Guess I'm not part of domainholdings's target audience. I've been programming computers for 33 years. So no, not before I even knew what a computer looked like. But man, how much money would I have, had I snapped up as many www. .com domains as I could, and sold them to the companies as they became i…
You probably would have made zero money as the companies would have filed a trademark / wipo dispute and taken the domains. I would have registered a bunch of generic domains, like business.com or sex.com (lookup the history of that domain for an interesting read.)
Unless your last name is nissan: http://www.nissan.com
Re: Oldest Domain Names
#58"Domain names have been actually been available for 28 years – yes, before you even knew what a computer looked like." Guess I'm not part of domainholdings's target audience. I've been programming computers for 33 years. So no, not before I even knew what a computer looked like. But man, how much money would I have, had I snapped up as many www. .com domains as I could, and sold them to the companies as they became i…
I get continually reminded of this when people see that I registered play.org as late as mid-1994. It was still free, and a substantial number of English words were still available. I'm often reminded by others that I could have also registered play.com or other common words.
Of course, much of the culture back then was: I only need one domain. This one was for my personal site, so obviously, it shouldn't be .com domain...
No regrets, though: I wouldn't want to be the type of person that looks for "under-utilized resources" to exploit. There are far more interesting things in life than that for me.
Re: Oldest Domain Names
#59> Domain names were free until 1995.
Is this really true? My memory says differently, as I remember being in college 1993/1994 and having discussions about the economics of speculatively purchasing domain names. And the economics were certainly not "free".
But I don't have a source I can site.
Re: Oldest Domain Names
#60Wait, 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?
The list is incomplete. Andrew McDowell at University College London had ucl.ac.uk actually operational in June 1985. UCL was also running .uk
http://domainincite.com/2657-was-this-the-first-ever-uk-doma... (see expecially the comments)