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 offered for $7.5 million—a surprising sum that may be one thing like $14 million in in the present day’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 straightforward for anybody to register and personal a website identify—sometimes at a value of $70 for a two-year stretch—which inspired “squatting,” whereby individuals would purchase an deal with just because they thought it will 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 could possibly be discovered mattered.
I contemplated the online’s placeiness after receiving a discover to resume one among my private domains not too long ago. It appeared pointless now: I’d purchased the deal with many years in the past, and it has been years because it obtained any actual visitors. Being discovered on-line has lengthy ceased to contain buying a plot of digital actual property for ourselves. As an alternative, we submerge in Huge Tech service platforms, hoping to search out engagement: by gaming the YouTube algorithm, maybe, or spam-replying to Elon Musk’s posts on X.
A lot is fabricated from the tendency towards “private manufacturers” within the present period of the online, however domains arguably originated the phenomenon. Again within the day, the benefit of remembering and appropriately typing a website identify right into a browser deal with 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 emblems extra typically, generic domains have been additionally extremely fascinating. When your mother or accountant sat down at a clean browser in 1999, they may not have identified what they have been in search of. 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 have been seeking 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 straightforward and low-cost, individuals had “dwelling pages” as an alternative, their URLs usually occluded behind lengthy, forgettable domains owned by your college or internet-service supplier. To personal a website, in contrast, was to exist at a high degree on-line, akin to Yahoo or Amazon, a minimum of in identify. A site staked a declare within the web’s Wild West. It was, effectively, a area, a lair, a realm. Don’t discover me at www-la1.my-webhost.web/~ianb; go to me at Bogost.com.
Many unusual individuals would register a website identify as a means of affirming a dedication to a inventive or business undertaking, 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 passion) and Baudrillyard.com (a postmodernist lawn-mowing recreation I by no means constructed). To resume them was to maintain these goals alive.
Google modified all of this. The power of a web site to look in search outcomes—in response to a question akin to house for hire in Kansas Metropolis—turned extra vital than the flexibility to recollect a URL. A apply that turned generally known as search-engine optimization, web optimization, 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 vital.
The social-media period additional undermined domains. House pages, to say nothing of private web sites, gave method 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 internet 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 in the present day than it as soon as did, this can be a big purpose—a comfort that has reoriented all the pieces.
At present, worth lies within the means to hyperlink, not the identify of the place linked. QR codes permit individuals to entry a catalog, a menu, or an ordering kind by pointing a digital camera at an indication relatively than typing an deal with. Instagram customers, free to place hyperlinks on their profile pages however unable to put them within the captions of their photographs, started utilizing and referencing “Hyperlink in bio” providers. Usually, hyperlinks in bios level to different providers, akin to Linktree, which department out to extra profiles elsewhere—YouTube, TikTok, and so forth, an countless slink between locations that by the way have names, relatively than named locations. Domains have 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, in fact, they usually proceed to bear worth. In 2007, Enterprise.com was offered at a 46-fold premium, for $345 million. You might be most likely studying this text on TheAtlantic.com, a nook of our on-line world from which this journal would by no means decamp. Besides, you seemingly arrived right here by means of an online search, or by clicking a hyperlink on LinkedIn or maybe one shared through textual content message. A site is important 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 undertaking. 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 might personalize my quick hyperlinks on blogs or Twitter), prices me a modest $40 a yr to keep up, however I by no means use it anymore. I’d relatively 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 undertaking 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 site used to mark off the area for a dream on-line. Now most of these goals have been realized, or deserted.
