The Curious Histories of Generic Domain Names

cheezitmike writes "ITworld.com uses the Wayback Machine to document the histories of five generic domain names: music.com, eat.com, car.com, meat.com, and milk.com. '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.'"

still waiting

[gEvil (beta)]

I'm still waiting for someone to make me an offer on my domain: thissitewillmakemerich.com

Re:Marketing Genius

[Ajehals]

The same people who thought that people would be exclusively buying their milk and meat (and admittedly other foodstuffs) on-line by now, some of them were VC's and dumped a huge amount of cash on this IIRC..

Over all these years

[Hsien-Ko]

purple.com always delivered what it promises.

Re:still waiting

[gEvil (beta)]

SOLD!



(hehehe. sucker.)

Re:Remember domain names BEFORE the web

[morgan_greywolf]

Remember that domain names pre-date the world wide web. Someone may have been using barf.com as a simple FTP site and never had a web page associated with it.

You kids and yer newfangled 'domain names'! Sheesh! Why, in my day, we had !-paths. To e-mail someone far away was truly an exercise in typing:

Remember that domain names pre-date the world wide web. Someone may have been using barf.com as a simple FTP site and never had a web page associated with it.

You could tell the route your mail was gonna take! And we LIKED it that way!

Now you kids get off my lawn!

Domain names, indeed. *shakes head in disgust*

The Future

[carrier lost]

"Hello, internet? I'd like some meat, please."

"Just send it right over. Thanks, bye"

ANUS.com

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.anus.com/ [anus.com]

Never a greater disappointment in a web site's contents in my WHOLE LIFE.

Re:The operative word is "almost"

[pegr]

...it's almost a badge of honor to have a Web site name that only hints at what the user will find there...
 
Like slashdot?

milk.com FAQ

[xanthines-R-yummy]

I love the FAQ milk.com! It's so appropriately craptastastic, I almost feel nostalgic...

Re:Marketing Genius

[techno-vampire]

Why? You're no different from most slashdotters.

Re:Marketing Genius

[Dancindan84]

Call me paranoid, but there's no way on earth any sane person would just plug in meat.com expecting (hoping?) to find steaks on an internet full of porn (which it was even back then). I'm just going to type in gloryhole.com and see if it's a site on glass blowing... AH GOD MY EYES!!

Re:Opera

[Mr. Underbridge]

Opera is the singular of opus, "work". Easy enough to figure out why the browser uses that name.

Is that meant to be ironic? Web browsers are what people use to *not* work.

apple.com

[Tuoqui]

Whoever got apple.com must have been sitting on a goldmine.

Obligatory Anchorman Reference

[kellyb9]

"Milk was a BAD choice"

Re:Over all these years

[Firehed]

Having been super-goatse'd from following a slashdotter's advice before, do I dare probe this domain for a sarcasm tag from work?

Re:Marketing Genius

[JimDaGeek]

Oh, come on now. Non-tech people didn't have the same "dirty" thoughts as us geeks.

I have 85 year old grandparents that have been married for over 50 years! Yeah, longer than most of us geeks were just a dirty thought in their daddy's head (no pun intended).

Older people just don't put 2 and 2 together and come up with 4 when it comes to the inter-tubes. They are after all, a series of pipes.

Now, as far as old school goes, I remember watching a pic download over a dog-old modem of a nude chick. Damn, talk about fun. I remember seeing the boobs start to show and then slowly the belly and then... damn, ouch mom, what was that slap for?

Re:Forgot one

[antifoidulus]

The hosting costs crucified him

Re:Opera

[Fear the Clam]

Opera used to use opera.no as its primary domain, as they didn't own opera.com

That must have driven their marketing people batshit.

Re:Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the browser that doesn't work is called "Internet Explorer".

Oh wait, I see what you mean now.

Re:Remember domain names BEFORE the web

[idontgno]

In Soviet Russia, kremvax [wikipedia.org] bang paths you!

Re:Over all these years

[Firehed]

Huh, truth in advertising... a rare occurrence these days. And certainly better than goatse.

Oh goatse... that will haunt me forever.

Ugh, damn. I'm thinking about it again.

Re:Marketing Genius

[OECD]

I don't think you guys are using your imagination. "milk.com" does not necessarily need to sell milk to be a marketing goldmine.

You're almost there...

• br3@st milk

Bingo! With that and "meat.com" and you can almost print money...

Re:Marketing Genius

[El Yanqui]

Well as a former employee of Kozmo.com when they first opened in Seattle, I can say with a bit of authority that VCs in the late 90s didn't realize a hell of a lot. "Deliver movies ordered online in an hour? With no delivery charge? Something, something. Profit!"

Re:still waiting

[fo0bar]

I own iwantyoutogivemeyourmoney.com [iwantyouto...rmoney.com]. Unfortunately, it hasn't been as profitable as I expected.

Re:ANUS.com

[Quattro Vezina]

Well, the people who run anus.com are Neo-Nazi assholes, so the name fits.