UYal's blog

🖥️ What Does “.com” Actually Mean?

You’ve seen it everywhere:
Google.com, Amazon.com, YouTube.com.

But have you ever stopped to wonder…
What does “.com” actually stand for?

.com = commercial

In the early days of the internet, domain names were categorized by purpose:

• .gov → Government organizations
• .edu → Educational institutions
• .org → Non-profits
• .net → Network providers
• .com → Commercial businesses

So, a “.com company” literally meant a business operating online.
It became a symbol of legitimacy—if you had a .com, you were seen as a “real” website.

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📉 The Dot-Com Bubble: When Just Having “.com” Made You a Billionaire

Back in the late 1990s to early 2000s, investors were throwing money at any startup with a “.com” in its name.

A few examples:

• Pets.com
• eToys.com
• Webvan.com

These companies had little more than a name and a vague business model.
Yet they were valued at hundreds of millions—sometimes even billions.

Eventually, the bubble burst in 2000.
Only a few truly valuable companies survived, like:

• Amazon.com
• eBay.com

The rest? Digital fossils.

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💾 Why Is the Save Icon a Floppy Disk?

Take a look at this icon:

💾

If you’re under 25, you might be wondering,
“What is this? A vending machine? A toaster?”

In reality, it’s a floppy disk—an actual physical storage device from the 80s and 90s.
Back then, saving your files = copying them onto a floppy disk.

Even though most people today have never seen or used a floppy disk,
the icon lives on as a quirky symbol of “Save.”

Kind of like how kids draw light bulbs to show ideas, even though most homes use LEDs now.

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📟 When Internet Culture Leaves Behind Clues

These artifacts are everywhere if you know where to look.
From domain names to chat platforms to ringtone culture:

• 💬 NateOn: A popular Korean messenger with stylish emoji packs
• 🎵 Cyon ringtones: You memorized your friends’ phone models just to send them custom tones
• 🎧 Cyworld: A social media site where people bought background music with “acorns”
• 📫 MSN, Hitel, Chollian: Online communication platforms before the days of Facebook

They were normal back then—so normal, no one thought to explain them.
Now? They’re strange relics of a time not so long ago.

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🧠 Why It Matters

This post isn’t about nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake.
It’s about understanding how digital culture leaves behind symbols that no longer explain themselves.

Just like a fossil reveals what life used to be like,
these old tech habits show how fast we’ve moved—and what we’ve forgotten.

So the next time you see “.com” at the end of a site,
or click that weird square disk to save a file,
remember:

You’re standing on layers of the early internet—and you’re walking on digital history.

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🗨️ Bonus Thought

Someone found my blog today by googling just “com”.
Honestly… that’s more shocking than it should be.

Forget “Do you know the taste of crab?”
Maybe it’s time to ask:

“Do you even know what dot-com means?” 😭

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