Oregon Public Broadcasting

It's really been a quarter of a century since the first .com domain name was registered on the web.The now-defunct company Symbolics registered for Symbolics.com on March 15th, 1985.  But the dot-com boom began not with a bang, but a little noticed click. According to VeriSign, only five more .com domain names were registered all of that year. It took another decade for the Internet to take off. Why?  In 1985, the Internet was mostly limited to large companies, universities and governments. The World Wide Web, or www system that we have come to know as the Internet, did not launch until 1990.  The first browser with embedded pictures? 1993. Then things started to move fast.  The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation says more than 600,000 domain names are registered each and every month. In case you were wondering, opb.org was registered in 1995. Learn more:25 Years of .com