New ITIF Report Looks at Internet’s Evolution

WASHINGTON, March 18, 2010 - The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation released a report this week looking at the evolution of the Internet and marking the 25th anniversary of the first dot-com registration.

The report takes a look at the Internet from1985 to its growth today. It now includes 80 million dot-coms and more than 200 million Web sites. The first registered dot-com was symbolics.com.

ITIF noted that its new report arrived “in an important week in the development of the Internet’s infrastructure, with the FCC announcing its long-awaited recommendations on the national broadband plan.”

The report found:
Of the roughly 250 million Web sites, about 80 million are .coms. Even after the collapse of the .com bubble, the number of domain names grows by an average of 668,000 a month;

The .coms account for some $400 million in economic benefits to businesses and consumers and that figure will likely double in the next 10 years; and

Only about 25 percent of the world's 6.7 billion participate in the dot-com economy but is changing. For example, 73 million Chinese became Internet users in 2007 alone;

The report urges:
Adoption of policies that allow for the deployment of technologies like wired and wireless broadband, mobile payments platforms, health IT and other Internet platforms;

Removal of regulatory and legal barriers to the emergence of new e-business models;

Creation of incentives for companies to invest in Internet-enabled business practices; and

Advancing digital literacy.