Forty-one years, one line.
Keep scrolling. The page moves sideways now, because time does.
→ 1985
Vol. I — 1985 → todayAn interactive longform in seven chaptersEst. Mar 15, 1985
The .com story, 1985–today: six names, then roughly a hundred and fifty-eight million. Told in dots, digits and one very short list of things that are still available.
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01The first six
1985
The year
March 15, 1985.A Massachusetts computer company, Symbolics, registers symbolics.com. It is the first .com ever recorded. Nothing about the day suggests it will matter.
About six, by December.That’s the whole class of ’85.
- symbolics.com
- bbn.com
- think.com
- mcc.com
- dec.com
- northrop.com
Today: about 158 million.From six to a number that needs its own commas. Approximate: Verisign’s quarterly counts hover between 157 and 160 million.
02Free, then a hundred dollars
For ten years it was a gift.
Registrations were handled under a U.S. government contract, first by SRI and, from 1993, by Network Solutions. A name arrived in days, for the price of an email. When there were a few thousand of them, this was a perfectly good arrangement.
Fig. 02 — The fee$100 / 2 yrs, then $50 / yr. Sept 1995, by the National Science Foundation.
In September 1995 the NSF let Network Solutions start charging: $100 for the first two years, $50 a year after that. Free had ended, and the web had barely begun.
Free had been fine for a few thousand names. The web was about to want millions.
A hundred dollars did not slow anyone down. Within five years the count climbed from roughly a hundred thousand names to some twenty million (rounded). Everyone had realised the same thing at the same time: an address is a brand, and a brand is a business.
03A million at a time
One dot, one million.
1985
6 domains
Scroll or drag the year · rounded estimates
04The long line
1985
Mar 15
symbolics.com
A Cambridge, Massachusetts computer company registers the first .com. Nobody notices.
1985
December · approx.
Six.
The whole namespace fits on a Post-it: symbolics, bbn, think, mcc, dec, northrop.
1995
September
The meter starts.
NSF lets Network Solutions charge: $100 for two years. Free is over.
1997
c. 1997 · approx.
Three letters, gone.
By about now, every three-letter .com had been registered. All 17,576 of them.
1998
September
A referee arrives.
ICANN is formed to oversee the internet’s naming system.
1999
The boom
business.com, $7.5M
A bare noun sells for $7.5 million. Around nine million .coms exist by year’s end (approx.).
2000
March
The crash.
Nasdaq peaks on March 10, then loses roughly 78% by 2002. Companies fold; many names stay registered.
2000
June
Verisign takes the keys.
Verisign acquires Network Solutions, and with it the .com registry. It still runs it.
2010
The big one
insurance.com, $35.6M
A reported $35.6 million, among the largest prices ever paid for a .com name.
2013
Four down · approx.
Four letters, gone.
By roughly 2013, every four-letter combination was taken. All 456,976.
2019
Voice
voice.com, $30M
Block.one pays a reported $30 million for it.
2024
Wholesale
$10.26
Registry price per year rises to $10.26. At retail, about $11.
2026
Now
aigohq.com
A brand-new domain is born, and the story ends where you came in.
01 / 142026
05Is it taken?
Try to find a short one.
Type one to four letters. We won’t look anything up. We’ll show you the rule, and the arithmetic that makes it impossible to break.
Try
Five letters? The rule stops at four: 11,881,376 combinations, and the shelves there aren’t bare.
The count
Taken
Type up to four letters above. Every one of them will be taken, and we’ll tell you why.
The rule · every .com of 1–4 letters is registered
26¹+26²+26³+26⁴ = 475,254 names
Against ≈158,000,000 registered .coms: roughly 0.3%.
06What a name costs
From eleven dollars to thirty-five million.
- insurance.com2010$35.6M
- voice.com2019$30M
- business.com1999$7.5M
- cars.comthe company≈ $872MApproximate company value, not a name price. About 24× the longest bar above, so it’s shown dashed.
MarginaliaPrices are as publicly reported; bars are linear and share one scale, apart from the dashed row.
And at the other end of the shelf
The registry’s wholesale price is now $10.26 a year; most registrars land near $11 (promos go lower, renewals sometimes higher). In 1995, $50 a year was the going rate. Adjusted for inflation that is roughly $100 today. In real terms a .com has become about nine times cheaper while the good ones got a great deal more expensive.
07One more
Forty-one years ago, six names. Today, nearly 160 million. In 2026, one more was born:
Visit aigohq.com →Registered 2026 · number ≈ 158,000,000-and-something