The Internet’s favorite top-level domain is close to hitting a huge milestone. The .com domain is now on the brink of reaching 100 million registered domain names. It’s a real triumph for what is already by far the world’s largest top-level domain – it accounts for around 45% of all domain names.
It’s not quite there yet, though. There are currently 98 million registered .com domain names, so there are still two million to go. Judging by the chart here below from Registrar Stats, we will reach the 100-million milestone within a few months, sometime around the end of this year.
The .com domain is one of the original top-level domains on the Internet, having been around since 1985 and the start of the Domain Name System that we all depend upon so much.
To give you an idea of how the .com domain has grown since its inception, we’ve put together this chart for you:
The number for December 2010 is an estimate based on the Registrar Stats chart and an old domain name industry brief from Verisign. The others come from BV.com.
Quite amazing, isn’t it? Especially when you compare today’s numbers with the modest beginnings in the 1980s and early 1990s, before the World Wide Web (you may have heard of it) made everyone flock to the Internet.
P.S. If you wonder about the jagged section in the chart from Registrar Stats, here is the explanation.
