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DMin
Asked: 2010-09-04 22:54:39 +0800 CST

How can someone get a single character domain?

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Last time I tried to register a domain of 2 characters it told me it had to be of more than 2 characters. How is it possible that paypal has

http://x.com

Is there a special way to go about this? obviously - a.com - b.com c.com are not taken(else cyber squatters would have been sitting on it since the early 90's)

Do you know how this works?

domain-registration specifications

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    It was purchased before 1993 by Weinstein & DePaolis, and subsequently sold to Paypal (or the company was bought out). In 1993 IANA reserved all remaining single letter second-level domains, and grandfathered the ones already issued. Other functional, corporate examples domains are t.co (Twitter) and q.com (Qwest).

    I hate to cite Wikipedia as a source, but it has an acceptable article on Single-letter second-level domains:

    On December 1, 1993, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) explicitly reserved the remaining single-letter and single-digit domain names. The few domains that were already assigned were grandfathered in and continued to exist.

    The assigned domains in this group are the following:

    i.net  INet Solutions Ltd     Future Media Architects
q.com  JG                     Qwest
q.net  Privately owned        Privately owned
x.com  Weinstein & DePaolis   PayPal
x.org  The Open Group         X.Org Foundation
z.com  HomePage.com           Nissan Motors

    As of April 2009 only three domains, i.net, x.com and x.org host a web site. q.com is active but redirects to qwest.com.

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  2. I'm not 100% sure but I believe it involves rubbing elbows with verisign execs, being very early on the internet (1993) and quite possibly a lot of money.

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  3. I don't know how Paypal has x.com, but a.com, b.com and c.com seem to be registered to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), and has been since 1992. Most of the single-letter .com domains are like that except q.com (qwest; since 1999?), x.com (paypal, since 1993?), and z.com (nissan, since 1997?)

    You have to check the whois database to see what's taken and by whom.

    I think the 1 letter domains were taken up by IANA back in 1992 and they made 3 exceptions. And the 2 letter domains are simply all taken so it's simplest for your registrar to tell you to not even bother with a 2 letter domain.

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  4. From the book 'The Paypal Wars', page 100:

    It seems that the rumor back in the day was that Elon Musk (current CEO of Tesla Motors) paid $1millon for X.com.

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