[ih] History of the Economics of the Internet?

[John Levine]

According to Craig Partridge via Internet-history <craig at tereschau.net>:
>> For domain names, scarcity. ...

>Which was ironic, as one of the major motivations for domain names was to
>solve the problems of a flat namespace. In a flat space, there could only
>be one "frodo" and domain names meant every sub-domain could have its own
>"frodo".
>
>Dredging my memory from discussions of the period, I would say the
>expectation was that everyone was thinking in terms of universities (so
>subdomains hanging off example.edu) and not enough about corporate names.
>DNS also came well before the Web.

I recall domain parks, which provided both hosting and a subdomain of the
park's domain.  My first domain names in the 1990s cost $100 for two years,
and involved several rounds of e-mail and sending NetSol a check.  Using
a subdomain of someone else's domain park was a lot easier and cheaper.

I'm not sure who persuaded businesses that they all need their own second
level domain but I assume it was Verisign, since it has made them very very
rich.

R's,
John