One morning in 1999, whereas I sat on the workplace laptop the place I constructed company web sites, a narrative popped up on Yahoo. An web area identify, Enterprise.com, had simply bought for $7.5 million—a surprising sum that may be one thing like $14 million in right this moment’s {dollars}.
The dot-com period, then nearing its finish, had been actually named for addresses akin to this one. By that point, it had change into simple for anybody to register and personal a website identify—sometimes at a price of $70 for a two-year stretch—which inspired “squatting,” whereby individuals would purchase an tackle just because they thought it could have some future worth. Fascinating URLs labored and traded like actual property, with precise domain-name brokers, escrow, rental and sale offers, and commissions. The net was a spot, and the place you would be discovered mattered.
I contemplated the online’s placeiness after receiving a discover to resume one among my private domains just lately. It appeared pointless now: I’d purchased the tackle many years in the past, and it has been years because it received any actual site visitors. Being discovered on-line has lengthy ceased to contain buying a plot of digital actual property for ourselves. As a substitute, we submerge in Huge Tech service platforms, hoping to seek out engagement: by gaming the YouTube algorithm, maybe, or spam-replying to Elon Musk’s posts on X.
A lot is made from the tendency towards “private manufacturers” within the present period of the online, however domains arguably originated the phenomenon. Again within the day, the convenience of remembering and appropriately typing a website identify right into a browser tackle bar was paramount. Dot com was most fascinating as a result of individuals considered it first; “Enterprise.web” would have appeared like a knockoff by comparability. A brief identify was splendid. Likewise, a particular one: Yahoo.com, say. However, counterintuitive to the principles of manufacturers and logos extra typically, generic domains had been additionally extremely fascinating. When your mother or accountant sat down at a clean browser in 1999, they won’t have identified what they had been on the lookout for. Thus the enchantment of Enterprise.com (for what? for enterprise). An apartment-rental web site referred to as Viva.com ended up utilizing Lease.com as its main area as an alternative, as a result of individuals had been trying to hire a spot, to not reside abstractly in Spanish.
These of us who had business and inventive lives beginning within the dot-com period developed a particular relationship with the area identify. Earlier than proudly owning or leasing a server turned simple and low cost, individuals had “dwelling pages” as an alternative, their URLs typically occluded behind lengthy, forgettable domains owned by your college or internet-service supplier. To personal a website, against this, was to exist at a high stage on-line, akin to Yahoo or Amazon, no less than in identify. A website staked a declare within the web’s Wild West. It was, properly, a area, a lair, a realm. Don’t discover me at www-la1.my-webhost.web/~ianb; go to me at Bogost.com.
Many bizarre individuals would register a website identify as a manner of affirming a dedication to a artistic or business mission, even when it by no means got here to fruition. For years, I’ve paid to resume domains akin to GelateriousEffects.com (a hypothetical model for my gelato interest) and Baudrillyard.com (a postmodernist lawn-mowing sport I by no means constructed). To resume them was to maintain these desires alive.
Google modified all of this. The power of an internet site to look in search outcomes—in response to a question akin to house for hire in Kansas Metropolis—turned extra necessary than the power to recollect a URL. A observe that turned generally known as search-engine optimization, website positioning, supplanted domain-name hypothesis. To be discoverable on-line as soon as meant placing up a shingle, having a spot the place your web stuff occurred. Within the search age, controlling the path to that place turned extra necessary.
The social-media period additional undermined domains. House pages, to say nothing of non-public web sites, gave strategy to accounts on platforms. You didn’t have a weblog anymore; you hosted a weblog on WordPress or Blogger. You had not a house web page however a profile on MySpace or Fb; as an alternative of a stand-alone net retailer, you would possibly simply begin an Etsy store. Search has unfold from Google to all the pieces: You discover stuff by fishing with key phrases, not by navigating to a location. If the web feels totally different to you right this moment than it as soon as did, this can be a big purpose—a comfort that has reoriented all the pieces.
In the present day, worth lies within the capacity to hyperlink, not the identify of the place linked. QR codes enable individuals to entry a catalog, a menu, or an ordering kind by pointing a digital camera at an indication reasonably than typing an tackle. Instagram customers, free to place hyperlinks on their profile pages however unable to put them within the captions of their pictures, started utilizing and referencing “Hyperlink in bio” companies. Typically, hyperlinks in bios level to different companies, akin to Linktree, which department out to extra profiles elsewhere—YouTube, TikTok, and so forth, an limitless slink between locations that by the way have names, reasonably than named locations. Domains had been invented as a result of individuals couldn’t be anticipated to recollect numerical server addresses because the web grew. Now one doesn’t even have to recollect the names.
Domains persist, after all, they usually proceed to bear worth. In 2007, Enterprise.com was bought at a 46-fold premium, for $345 million. You might be in all probability studying this text on TheAtlantic.com, a nook of our on-line world from which this journal would by no means decamp. Besides, you possible arrived right here via an internet search, or by clicking a hyperlink on LinkedIn or maybe one shared by way of textual content message. A website is critical however now not notable. A dot com is only a historic accident of the online’s construction.
After three many years accumulating domains, those I personal have began to really feel burdensome. I’ll by no means make Baudrillyard—it ought to have been a tweet, not a mission. I’ll by no means open a gelato store—it’s sufficient to churn some ice cream for my buddies. Bogo.st, a website I registered through the heyday of URL-shortening instruments (so I may personalize my brief hyperlinks on blogs or Twitter), prices me a modest $40 a 12 months to take care of, however I by no means use it anymore. I’d reasonably spend that money on cheeseburgers to place in my human mouth than on digital plots on the web.
So I’ve begun letting my domains lapse—the equal of lastly junking an unfinished mission within the closet or letting a yard develop feral. Enterprise.com is only a web site now. Viva.com is a European financial institution. Yahoo.com is a joke. A website used to mark off the area for a dream on-line. Now most of these desires have been realized, or deserted.
