NYT.com
In 1994, registering a domain name was still free.
John Markoff, registered NYT.com between 3 to 5 years earlier, despite what the registration date of the three letter .com asserts.
Those were the days of the pre-commercial Internet, when domain names were still viewed as exotic, and very few had the means to access them.
Still, Mr. Markoff, a technology reporter at the New York Times, registered NYT.com for his personal email: markoff@nyt.com.
To establish a live email address, he had to use Internex, an ISP based in Menlo Park, California; the company was the first ISDN Internet service provider in Northern California.
In 1995, the New York Times went online, and Mr. Markoff offered them domain NYT.com – for free. Surprisingly, his offer was turned down initially, opting for NYTimes.com instead.
The rest, is history.
Read the full article, at NYT.com.
