Curious Histories of Generic Domain Names

In this brave new Web 2.0 world, it’s almost a badge of honor to have a Web site name that only hints at what the user will find there (see Flickr) or is so opaque as to offer no clue at all as to what the Web site is about (see del.icio.us). It’s easy to forget the first Internet gold rush of the mid-to-late ’90s, when dot-com domain names based on ordinary (and, investors hoped, marketable) nouns and verbs were snapped up by hopeful companies from the humble geeks who had purchased them (often ironically) in the early ’90s. The weird and woolly history of the Web can best be traced through some of its most generic domains. Here’s a sampling that traces the arc from the geeks to the entrepreneurs and into a more staid corporate world.

Read the rest of this post