In its infancy, the internet was simply a way for government agencies, educators and academic professionals to speak to one another. Today, of course, virtually every business in the world is built on or relies on the internet as a form of commerce.
But what if the internet had never turned to commercialization? What if it had remained just for government and academics?
Much of the transformation goes back to the early to mid-1990s when the US government awarded a contract to a small company in Northern Virginia called Network Solutions. They were granted the exclusive right to sell the domain names that we all know so well – .com, .org, .net and so forth.
The chairman of Network Solutions was a guy named Michael Daniels and in 2013 he wrote a book about the early history of the commercialization of the web. His book was called Names, Numbers And Network Solutions. And that’s when I had the chance to talk with him.
So here now from 2013. Michael Daniels.