A Timeline of All Domain Name Extensions (Infographic)

Posted in Website Building On July 23, 2015

A while ago we guided you through the most important aspects of picking a domain name for your website. We even published a step-by-step guide for the purpose.

But what about the history of the domain name and the domain name extension? It’s interesting to know that things were way different from today.

Before there were any domain names at all there were only IP addresses. Nowadays you can still visit a website by typing its IP address in the browser, but surely it’s way easier to just type the domain name. Back in 1985 there were only 6 of them registered. The first one was registered on March 15, 1985 by Symbolics Computer Corp., a computer manufacturer from Massachusetts, and it was symbolics.com.

1985 was the year when the first domain name extensions where launched – .com, .gov, .mil, .net, .org, .edu, .il, .us, .uk. And it was not untill 1995 when companies and individuals willing to buy a domain name where charged for that with prices starting from $100 for a two-years service.

A big revoultion in domain names happened in 2014 when more than 100 new generic top-level domains (new gTLDs) were added with another big chunk of new extensions added this year as well. Some of the new gTLDs include .apps, .tools, .restaurant, .cloud and much more (see all of them in the infographic below).

And a few interesting facts:

Most of you may think that the .tv domain stands for ‘television’. But you may be a little bit surprised to learn that it really stands for the country Tuvalu – a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean with some 10,000 citizens. Back in the days the local government decided to take advantage of the .tv domain name extension an open it up for registration. Now the domain is operated by dotTV which is partly owned by the island’s governemnt.

Another interesting case is that with the .me domain name extension which is popular among personal websites. But the truth is that .me domain stands for the country Montenegro. Just as with the .tv domain the governemnt decided to take advantage of the coincidence and now the domain is open for registration by everybody.

The European Domain Cenre published a nice infographic on Visual.ly showing a timeline of all domain name extensions. Check it out!