It’s hard to believe but the world’s oldest dot-com address still exists, and it’s turning 30 on Sunday.
The domain name, Symbolics.com, is still accessible, although there’s barely any functions available.
According to CNNMoney, the domain name was first bought by a company with the same name, Symbolics, on March 15, 1985.
It was a company best-known for developing a computer language called “Lisp,” and even went public at one point. But the company ended up filing for bankruptcy in 1993, and now it’s privately held.
In 2009, Symbolics sold the domain to a company called XF.com Investments for an undisclosed amount, and moved its site to symbolics-dks.com instead.
XF.com Investment kept the site alive and its CEO Aron Meystedt told NetworkWorld that Symbolics.com still gets several hundred to a several thousands visitors a day, depending on how well the site is “circulated on social media and news blogs.”
Although he once told plans of turning Symbolics.com into a “site that will be useful for the ‘betterment of humanity,’” the website largely remains defunct, only displaying a strange city landscape image on the front page.
And don’t expect that to change anytime soon. When asked if he had any plans of selling the domain, Meystedt said, “We have no plans to sell the name at this time.”
What’s So special about the domain….Well, I’ve got no answer.