Symbolics.com is the first registered .com domain name on the Internet; it is to say, the oldest .com domain. It was registered by Symbolics, Inc., an American computer manufacturer, back on March 15, 1985. Decades later, in August 2009, it was acquired by XF.com Investments (now napkin.com).
First 100 registered .com domains
The first 100 .com domain names were registered between March 15, 1985 and November 30, 1987.
| Registration date | Domain name | Registered by |
| March 15, 1985 | symbolics.com | Symbolics, Inc. |
| April 24, 1985 | bbn.com | Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc. (now Raytheon BBN) |
| May 24, 1985 | think.com | Thinking Machines Corporation |
| July 11, 1985 | mcc.com | Microelectronics and Computer Consortium (later Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation) |
| September 30, 1985 | dec.com | Digital Equipment Corporation |
| November 7, 1985 | northrop.com | Northrop Corporation |
| January 9, 1986 | xerox.com | Xerox Holdings Corporation |
| January 17, 1986 | sri.com | SRI International |
| March 3, 1986 | hp.com | Hewlett-Packard Company |
| March 5, 1986 | bellcore.com | Bellcore (now iconectiv) |
| March 19, 1986 | ibm.com | International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) |
| sun.com | Sun Microsystems, Inc. | |
| March 25, 1986 | intel.com | Intel Corporation |
| ti.com | Texas Instruments Incorporated | |
| April 25, 1986 | att.com | AT&T, Inc. |
| May 8, 1986 | gmr.com | General Motors Research Laboratories |
| tek.com | Tektronix, Inc. (known as Tek) | |
| July 10, 1986 | fmc.com | FMC Corporation |
| ub.com | Ungermann-Bass (also UB Networks) | |
| August 5, 1986 | bell-atl.com | Verizon Communications, Inc. (known as Verizon) |
| ge.com | General Electric Company | |
| grebyn.com | Grebyn Corporation | |
| isc.com | Interactive Systems Corporation | |
| nsc.com | National Semiconductor | |
| stargate.com | Stargate Information Services | |
| September 2, 1986 | boeing.com | The Boeing Company |
| September 18, 1986 | ITCorp.com | Interrupt Technology Corporation |
| September 29, 1986 | siemens.com | Siemens |
| October 18, 1986 | pyramid.com | Pyramid Technology Corporation |
| October 27, 1986 | alphacdc.com | Alpha Communications Development Corporation |
| bdm.com | Braddock, Dunn & McDonald (later BDM International) | |
| fluke.com | Fluke Corporation | |
| inmet.com | Intermetrics, Inc. (later AverStar) | |
| kesmai.com | Kesmai | |
| mentor.com | Mentor Graphics (acquired by Siemens in 2017) | |
| nec.com | NEC Corporation | |
| ray.com | Raytheon Technologies Corporation | |
| rosemount.com | Rosemount, Inc. | |
| vortex.com | Vortex Technology | |
| November 5, 1986 | alcoa.com | Alcoa Corporation |
| gte.com | GTE Corporation | |
| November 17, 1986 | adobe.com | Adobe Systems Incorporated |
| amd.com | Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. | |
| das.com | DA Systems, Inc. | |
| data-io | Data I/O | |
| octopus.com | Octopus Enterprises | |
| portal.com | Portal Information Network (later Portal Software, Inc.) | |
| teltone.com | Teltone Corporation | |
| December 11, 1986 | 3com.com | 3Com Corporation |
| amdahl.com | Amdahl Corporation | |
| ccur.com | Concurrent Computer Corporation | |
| ci.com | Cognition, Inc. | |
| convergent.com | Convergent Technologies, Inc. | |
| dg.com | Data General Corporation | |
| peregrine.com | Peregrine Systems, Inc. | |
| quad.com | Quadraton Systems, Inc. | |
| sq.com | SoftQuad Software | |
| tandy.com | Tandy Corporation | |
| tti.com | Citicorp (now Citigroup, Inc. or Citi) | |
| unisys.com | Unisys Corporation | |
| January 19, 1987 | cgi.com | Carnegie Group, Inc. |
| cts.com | Crash TimeSharing | |
| spdcc.com | S.P. Dyer Computer Consulting | |
| February 19, 1987 | apple.com | Apple Computer Company (now Apple, Inc.) |
| March 4, 1987 | nma.com | Network Management Associates |
| prime.com | Prime Computer, Inc. | |
| April 4, 1987 | philips.com | N.V. Philips’ Gloeilampenfabrieken (known as Philips) |
| April 23, 1987 | datacube.com | Datacube, Inc. |
| kai.com | Kuck and Associates, Inc. | |
| tic.com | Texas Internet Consulting | |
| vine.com | Vine Technology | |
| April 30, 1987 | ncr.com | National Cash Register (now NCR Corporation) |
| May 14, 1987 | cisco.com | Cisco Systems, Inc (known as Cisco) |
| rdl.com | Research Development Laboratories | |
| May 20, 1987 | slb.com | Schlumberger Limited (SLB) |
| May 27, 1987 | parcplace.com | ParcPlace Systems, Inc. |
| utc.com | United Technologies Corporation (UTC) | |
| June 26, 1987 | ide.com | Interactive Development Environments, Inc. |
| July 9, 1987 | trw.com | TRW, Inc. |
| July 13, 1987 | unipress.com | Unipress Software |
| July 27, 1987 | dupont.com | DuPont de Nemours, Inc. (known as DuPont) |
| lockheed.com | Lockheed Corporation | |
| July 28, 1987 | rosetta.com | Rosetta Consulting |
| August 18, 1987 | toad.com | John Gilmore |
| August 31, 1987 | quick.com | Quicksilver Engineering |
| September 3, 1987 | allied.com | AlliedSignal |
| dsc.com | Digital Sound Corporation | |
| sco.com | The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. (known as SCO) | |
| September 22, 1987 | gene.com | Genentech, Inc. |
| kccs.com | KC Computer Sciences | |
| spectra.com | Spectragraphics Corporation | |
| wlk.com | W.L. Kennedy Jr. & Associates | |
| September 30, 1987 | mentat.com | Mentat, Inc. |
| October 14, 1987 | wyse.com | Wyse Technology (Wyse) |
| November 2, 1987 | cfg.com | Caine, Farber & Gordon, Inc. |
| November 9, 1987 | marble.com | Marble Associates, Inc. |
| November 16, 1987 | cayman.com | Cayman Systems, Inc. |
| entity.com | Entity Cyber, Inc. | |
| November 24, 1987 | ksr.com | Kendall Square Research (KSR) |
| November 30, 1987 | nynexst.com | NYNEX Corporation |
Source: iwhois (archived)
How many .com domains are registered nowadays?
According to Verisign’s Domain Name Industry Brief of Q3 2022, there are 160.9 million .com domain names registered in the world, out of a total of 349.9 million registered domains across all top-level domains (TLDs).
The 100 million .com domain names milestone was surpassed during Q1 2012, about 27 years after the registration of the very first one — as reported by Verisign on The Domain Name Industry Brief of July 2012.
Top-level domain .com
The .com domain is one of the top-level domains in the Internet’s Domain Name System (DNS). It is derived from the word commercial, as it was intended for domains registered by commercial organizations. However, it later became a domain for general purposes and the most commonly used one as well.
The domains .com, .edu, .gov, .int, .mil, .net and .org were the first TLDs added in the DNS implementation at the beginning of 1985.
First registered domain name of the original TLDs
| Registration date | Domain name | Registered by | |
| .com | March 15, 1985 | symbolics.com | Symbolics, Inc. |
| .edu | April 24, 1985 | berkeley.edu | University of California, Berkeley |
| cmu.edu | Carnegie Mellon University | ||
| purdue.edu | Purdue University | ||
| rice.edu | Rice University | ||
| ucla.edu | University of California, Los Angeles | ||
| .gov | – | – | – |
| .int | October 10, 1995 | ffa.int | Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency |
| .mil | – | – | – |
| .net | January 1, 1985 | nordu.net | Nordic Infrastructure for Research and Education |
| .org | July 10, 1985 | mitre.org | The Mitre Corporation |
The lists of the oldest registered domain names of the first TLDs added to the Domain Name system are available on wikipedia.
Registration dates of tech platforms and companies’ .com domain names
Finally, just out of curiosity, here is a list of the .com domain name’s registration of some of the largest technology companies and platforms. Data is publicly available on ICANN’s lookup tool.
| Company | Domain | Registration date |
| Xerox | xerox.com | January 9, 1986 |
| HP | hp.com | March 3, 1986 |
| IBM | ibm.com | March 19, 1986 |
| Intel | intel.com | March 25, 1986 |
| Adobe | adobe.com | November 17, 1986 |
| Apple | apple.com | February 19, 1987 |
| Dell | dell.com | November 22, 1988 |
| Microsoft | microsoft.com | May 2, 1991 |
| Amazon | amazon.com | November 1, 1994 |
| Samsung | samsung.com | November 29, 1994 |
| eBay | ebay.com | August 4, 1995 |
| TikTok | tiktok.com | July 21, 1996 |
| Facebook/Meta | facebook.com | March 29, 1997 |
| google.com | September 15, 1997 | |
| Netflix | netflix.com | November 11, 1997 |
| twitter.com | January 21, 2000 | |
| WordPress | wordpress.com | March 3, 2000 |
| linkedin.com | November 2, 2002 | |
| instagram.com | June 4, 2004 | |
| YouTube | youtube.com | February 15, 2005 |
Stackscale’s commercial domain name, stackscale.com, was registered on November 30, 2011, as our project to provide specialized cloud computing services was starting to take shape.
