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Internet Artifacts

(neal.fun)
681 points mikerg87 | 2 comments | 13 May 25 11:49 UTC | HN request time: 0.411s | source
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jetrink ◴[15 May 25 13:17 UTC] No.43994733[source]▶
I jumped over to the Wikipedia page of early blogger Justin Hall to see what he's up to. He has another distinction that he can probably claim: The longest recorded gap between registering a domain and finally using it to start a business.

"In September 2017, Hall began work as co-founder & Chief Technology Officer for bud.com, a California benefit corporation delivering recreational cannabis, built on a domain name he registered in 1994."

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1. rob ◴[15 May 25 14:26 UTC] No.43995461[source]▶
I think domains were even free in 1994. I think the owner of rob.com told me he just had to send in a form or something back then.
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2. qingcharles ◴[15 May 25 17:45 UTC] No.43997463[source]▶
They were. I think it was 1995 they started charging? I had dozens of domains. There was a simple text file form you had to type over. Then they started charging $200/2yr for .com/.net/.org and a lot of us let our domains go which ended up being worth tens of millions a few years later during the boom.

(the story at the time of what killed the "free" is that Unilever mailed in 19,000 forms; one for each of their registered trademarks)