If you wanted a .com address in 1997, you had one place to get it. Network Solutions ran the registry for .com, .net and .org under a contract with the National Science Foundation, and it charged $100 for two years. Every new web business paid the toll. The company was a small Virginia unit of defense contractor SAIC. When it went public that September, it was selling the land the whole commercial internet was about to build on.

A Consulting Shop Gets the Keys

Emmit McHenry and three partners started Network Solutions in Washington, D.C., in 1979 as a technology consulting firm. In 1993 it won a government contract to register internet domain names, a quiet job when few people used the web. SAIC bought the company in 1995. That same year Network Solutions began charging for names. As the web took off, a sleepy clerical contract turned into a monopoly on the most valuable addresses in the world.

Twenty-One Billion for an Address Book

Network Solutions priced at $18 a share in September 1997 and began trading on Nasdaq as NSOL on September 26. SAIC kept about three-quarters of the company. Competition for registrations arrived in 1999, but the stock had already soared. In March 2000, near the top of the bubble, VeriSign agreed to buy the company for about $21 billion in stock. Network Solutions lives on as a web-hosting brand owned by Newfold Digital.

Cover: Spider, Odilon Redon. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a spider (the keeper of the web).