On the 15^th March 2010, the internet celebrated the 25^th anniversary of the first dotcom address, the BBC reported.

In 1985, a company in Massachusetts added dotcom to its name, but only 5 more dotcom names were registered that year. According to the BBC, it took until 1997 – 12 years on, before the beginning of the internet boom. According to the Telegraph, today 100,000 dotcom addresses are registered every day.

The BBC last week published some visualisations of how the internet looks today and how it’s grown over the past 25 years and reported that there are 1.7 billion internet users in the world. In terms of UK growth, there were 46 million users online in 2008, compared to just 8 million in 1998. Key players such as Google and Facebook have arguably acted as catalysts in the growth of the internet and its importance. Google itself has over 300 million users, while Facebook has 218 million unique users.

Here at Sign-Up.to, we have a dot-to address, as opposed to dotcom, but without the birth of dotcom, addresses such as ours wouldn’t be available. Dotcom opened up options, to consumers and to businesses. The BBC go on to report that research by ITIF claim businesses are more profitable if they are using the internet.

The average profitability of companies using the internet increased by 2.7%. The research also found that the economic benefits equal $1.5 trillion.

In today’s world, we ask the question – where would we be without the internet? Companies such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft have arguably revolutionised the way we behave, the way we get educate ourselves and the way we communicate with each other. It will be interesting to see where the internet will be in 25 years time.

What do you think? Could you live without the internet? Let us know in the comments form below!