The 100 Oldest Dot-Com Domain Names

Have you seen this list of the 100 Oldest Currently Registered Dot-Com Domain Names? It’s a fascinating list of internet history. The first domain on the list is SYMBOLICS.COM and it was registered on March 15, 1985.

There are a couple interesting things to point out here:

• From what I can tell about 80 of the domains are gigantic companies. The likes of Intel, Xerox, Apple and Convergent are all on the list.
• There are no “market-oriented” domains on the list. For instance, you don’t see names like LOAN.COM or PETS.COM. I found that very surprising.

After looking at this list, it seems the corporate behemoths in the US were alerted to register these names by the government before anyone else had ever heard of the internet. Of course, that’s just speculation. Thoughts?