'Have you discovered that the Internet is a big thing?' asked Jane Hulbert, from McDonald's media relations, whom I spoke to not long ago.
Of course, to contemporary eyes this question seems somewhat out of place. The Internet, it turns out, was about to become something big.
But while McDonalds wasn't interested in buying “mcdonalds.com” initially, it ultimately had no choice but to purchase the domain name from Quittner (after the story broke, of course), who then donated his hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits to charity.
Today, domain names are even more valuable. In 2010, for list of argentina whatsapp phone numbers example, the web address “insurance.com” was sold for $35.6 million (28.7 million euros), making it the most expensive domain ever sold.
It's pretty clear that custom domain names are worth it, not only for megalithic corporations, but for small business owners as well.
What exactly is a domain name?
Every website you visit has a domain name (right now, for example, you are at blog.ueni.com).
Domain names were first created as a technical shortcut for Internet users, i.e. as a nominal substitute for IP addresses, each consisting of a unique series of numbers. Rather than forcing web browsers to memorize the IP address associated with each website they want to visit, Internet pioneers created the first domain names.
Think of domain names as the contacts stored on your mobile phone – when you want to call someone, you just select their name (because you probably don't know the number by heart).
While you can use third-party sites to purchase a domain name , the body in charge of registering them is called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit organization based in California.
