닷컴도메인 오늘로 30주년...1호 기업 심볼릭스사는 어떤 기업?

[글로벌이코노믹 김재희 기자] 닷컴 도메인이 등장한 지 오늘로 30주년을 맞았다.

미국의 컴퓨터 제조업체인 심볼릭스 사는 1985년 3월16일 symbolics.com이라는 도메인을 등록했다.

이것이 세계의 도메인 역사를 처음 연 닷컴 도메인 등록 1호이다. 이 도메인은 여전히 사용되고 있다.(사진 참조) 미국 국방부가 직접 닷컴 도메인을 관리하던 시절이다.

애플이 애플닷컴을 등록한 것은 이보다 2년가량 늦은 1987년 2월이다.
1989년 유럽입자물리연구소(CERN) 소속이던 팀 버너스 리가 월드와이드웹을 개발한 후부터 닷컴 도메인의 대중화 시대가 본격적으로 열렸다.

현재 등록된 닷컴 도메인은 1억1500만 여개에 이른다.

지금 이 순간에도 1초에 한 개씩의 닷컴이 새로 등록되고 있다.

다음은 심볼릭사가 자체 제작한 소개문

Symbolics.com is owned by a small investor group in Dallas, Texas. This site offers unique and interesting facts pertaining to business and Internet history.
Symbolics.com also offers a few unique advertising opportunities for select companies. Contact us if you have interest.

? Symbolics.com History ?

So. How did I come to own the first domain name registered on the Internet? Symbolics.com was registered on March 15, 1985. I was 5 years old. I like to tell everyone that I had incredible foresight as a toddler. But that’s not the case.

Let me tell you a bit about the Symbolics Computer Corporation. These are the people who registered the name in 1985, and they were a company way ahead of its time.

The original Symbolics company pioneered computer development. Symbolics designed and manufactured a line of Lisp machines, single-user computers optimized to run the Lisp programming language. The Lisp Machine was the first commercially available “workstation” (although that word had not yet been coined). Symbolics also made significant advances in software technology, and offered one of the premier software development environments of the 1980s and 1990s. **

Enter me, in 2009. I had always known (well, since the late 90s) that Symbolics.com was the first domain name registered on the Internet. It was a goal of mine to acquire one of the first few names ever registered. I know that others before me had reached out to Symbolics, and inquired about the purchase price of the domain name. For whatever reason, my timing was perfect (thank you Lord) and I contacted Symbolics right about the time they actually started considering selling the asset.

Today, Symbolics.com remains the first, and oldest, registered domain name out of approximately 275,000,000 domain names in existence. Of these 275 million domain names, approximately 120 million are of the .com extension. VeriSign reports that between 25 million and 30 million new domains are registered each year. There is a 72% ? 75% renewal rate among .com domains ? so approximately 3/4 of new registrations are renewed the following year. VeriSign reports that 87% of .com domains resolve to an active website (13% are inactive).

For me, personally, I am excited (and honored) to hold the first .com ever registered. Since domain names are my business, I am happy to be the owner of this fantastic piece of Internet history.

김재희 기자 yoonsk828@