A report on Wednesday said that the main Internet suffix “dot-com” (.com) could have been “dot-cor” (.cor).
The Washington Post reported that “.cor” could have most-used suffix on the Internet, standing for corporate. As it stands, “.com” stands for “commercial.”
Craig Partridge, who was involved in early discussions about what the Internet would look like, made the revelation to the Post.
“Originally it was going to be .cor, for corporate,” Partridge told the paper. He said that “.com” was used instead for reason he can’t remember clearly.
The first dot-com was registered in March 1985 to Symbolics, a manufacturer of computers in Massachusetts.
He said that it was a small group of people who decided on the most ubiquitous top-level-domains, including .gov, .edu., and .org.
“Dot-net, dot-ARPA — and that may have been the full list. It was definitely no more than 10,” he said.
And he said that it was unclear how much use the TLDs would get. “It wasn’t clear that people were ever going to be on the Internet,” he told the ppaer.
