Remember the go-go days of the 1990s, when dot-com domain names based on ordinary nouns and verbs were snapped up by hopeful companies? Here's a look at five very generic domain names, and where they've been. music.com Today the Music.com site is a social networking and information site, complete with video and audio. But in 1996, when most of us were still painstakingly creating our flirty mixes on cassette tapes, it seemed perfectly reasonable that the domain be occupied by MUSIC Semiconductors, Inc. (the name stood for “Multi-User Specialty Integrated Circuits”) — because, really, what did the Web have to do with music? eat.com Posing as “Mama’s Dining Room,” eat.com was one of the world’s first astroturfing sites! The current iteration of the site is a much more straightforward homepage for the Ragú brand, now owned by Anglo-Dutch megacorporation Unilever. car.com At some point before 1999, someone at Carter-Wallace, Inc., a pharmaceutical research firm, obviously thought “carterwallace.com is kind of a pain to type out. What if we just put our Website at the much easier to remember car.com?” And there it stayed all the way until mid-2002, baffling anyone who might be looking for a cheap deal on an automobile. meat.com In 1996, meat.com was a classic bit of golden age Internet whimsy called L’Industrie De Meat: an oddish logo on standard- issue mid-90s textured background, with an anti-Communications Decency Act jeremiad, links to an “Internet hall of shame” (optimized for Netscape 2.0), and information about the “Transnational Church of Life on Mars.” There was also a link to the site’s creator’s software offering: Color Manipulation Device, which helped HTML newbies choose the colors for their Web pages. By early 2000, though, the proprietor of L’Industrie had sold the site (hopefully at full height-of-boom prices) to a company looking to sell and promote, well meat. milk.com Sometimes things just stay the same. Milk.com was snapped up in the unheard-of ancient year of 1994 by Internet denizen Dan Bornstein, and it’s remained a classic homepage in the ’90s sense — sparse background, unformatted text, easy-to-find links — ever since. Now read: How 10 Famous Technology Products Got Their Names How 6 Memorable Tech Companies Got Their Names Related content feature 8 change management questions every IT leader must answer Designed to speed adoption and achieve business outcomes, change management hasn’t historically been a strength of IT orgs. It’s time to flip that script by asking hard questions to hone change strategies. By Stephanie Overby Nov 30, 2023 10 mins Change Management IT Leadership feature CIO Darlene Taylor’s formula for success: Listen, drive, care This Motor City CIO says building and maintaining credibility starts with an empathy-driven approach, which has the potential to render you highly appealing to top talent. By Michael Bertha Nov 30, 2023 6 mins Automotive Industry IT Leadership brandpost Sponsored by Huawei 400G: Building bandwidth for the next lap By Jane Chan Nov 30, 2023 5 mins Networking feature 4 remedies to avoid cloud app migration headaches The compelling benefits of using proprietary cloud-native services come at a price: vendor lock-in. Here are ways CIOs can effectively plan without getting stuck. By Robert Mitchell Nov 29, 2023 9 mins CIO Managed Service Providers Managed IT Services Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe