Register.com was one of the first companies allowed to compete with Network Solutions for .com names. Owning a .com then felt like owning land in a city still being drawn. Register.com made claiming that land simple for small businesses and ordinary people, and it moved fast. When it filed to go public in early 2000, people were claiming millions of new names every year. The land rush looked like it might never end.

Front Door to the Web

The Forman brothers started out running an internet service business in New York. They saw that the hardest step for most customers was the first one: getting a name. When the domain registry opened to competition, they made a bet. A clean, fast storefront for names could become the front door to everything else a small business needed online, from email to hosting to a basic website.

Cheaper Names, $7.81 a Share

Register.com priced at $24 a share in March 2000. Competition among registrars soon drove name prices down. The company spent the next years leaning on add-on services to keep its customers. Richard Forman stepped down as chief executive in 2003. In 2005, Vector Capital agreed to buy Register.com for $7.81 a share in cash, a deal worth about $200 million.

Cover: New York Street, Childe Hassam. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a city street of addresses (domain names).