Today I Learned, 4 Interesting Facts About Domain Names

Today I Learned, 4 Interesting Facts About Domain NamesToday, I am going to share 4 most Interesting Facts about Domain names that you probably haven’t heard.

1.  Believe it or not, Until 1995 Domain Registration was free!

Prices of Domain Names went through a lot of ups and downs since the very beginning, Domain names started as a free asset in 1985 but In the year 1995 when Network Solutions was granted the authority to start charging for domain names, They kept the price at 100 USD for 2 years, which dropped to 70 USD in the year 1997.

In 1998, Domain name prices came down after the formation of ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).

2.  Domain name such as example.com or example.org is reserved for use in private testing only and cannot be registered by anyone.

Earlier, Under the act  RFC 2606, Following were the domain names which were technically unregistrable ,

  • test.com
  • example.com
  • invalid.com
  • localhost.com
But, Somehow After sometime, all other domains except example.com(/.net/.org/etc ) became available for registration.

 3.  PrivateJet.com is the most expensive domain name sold  ever at $30.2 million.

Earlier this year Nations Luxury Transportation, LLC acquired the domain PrivateJet.com for $30.2 million, making it the most expensive domain ever sold.

In the race of most expensive domain sales, Privatejet.com is followed by, Insure.com ($16 Million) and on the third spot comes sex.com ($13 Million).

4.  It costs $40,000 to register a Nigerian domain extension (.ng) for one year, while regular .com’s go for $10 a year on average.

Nigerian top-level domains are the most expensive in the world costing $40,000 per year and Namibia (.na) domains are the 2nd most expensive top level domains costing $4,300 USD, which is 10 times less than what Nigerian’s charge.

Now, the question is why Nigerian domain extension is so expensive? Well, I tried to find the answer but couldn’t find anything reasonable. If you find out, share in comments.

That’s it for now, i hope you enjoyed the post.

Last time in Today I Learned section, I posted, 4 Interesting facts about Twitter usage, if you missed it or if you are new to our blog, Do check it out too, i bet you will be amazed. Here’s the Link.

comment Comments 4
  • DevinderMaheshwari says:

    cepemare  Haha, nice one 🙂 That would have been a rather more interesting fact. 

    Thanks for stopping by.

  • cepemare says:

    I guess the 0 (zero) key got stuck? They probablly wanted to type 4$, but the key got stuck and they got 40.000$?

  • 25 Kickass and Random Fact List #6 - KickassFacts.com says:

    […] 9. Domain names were free until 1995. – Source […]

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