A brief history of domains

TL;DR - go scroll through A Brief History of Domains!

Earlier this year, dot com turned 40. Since July, when I started work on this book, I’ve been piecing together a timeline in my head: when DNS was developed, when countries got their own TLDs, when registration opened to the public, and dozens of other milestones.

I put that timeline on paper with some visuals and doodles marking key moments, like the first GoDaddy Super Bowl ad and Google Domains shutting down.

Unlike a printed book, I can update this timeline whenever, so reply if there are any milestones you think I ought to include.

A Brief History of Domains was inspired by Deno’s Brief History of JavaScript and Neal(.fun) Agarwal’s Internet Artifacts.

ICANN84

Tonight I’m boarding a red eye to Dublin for ICANN84. Let me know if you’ll be there—I’d love to meet up!

I’m particularly excited to listen in on discussions (and debates) on the 2026 gTLD round. Last time around, in 2012, many strings were contested, like Dodge’s application for .ram by the Indian government because of the association with the Hindu diety Ram. Other applications moved to “auctions of last resort” like the $135 million Nu Dot Co (funded by Verisign) paid for .web, which is still stuck in legal challenges nearly a decade later.

Thanks for reading. If you like A Brief History of Domains, send it to a nerdy friend.