5 November 1986
The first step towards this evolution was made on 5 November 1986, when the country code .de was included in the official list of IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority), the organization responsible for the global coordination of the central functions of the Internet. With this entry, domains with the country code for Germany were permitted to be registered for the first time in history. By now, nearly every state in the world has its own so-called country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD), including the Vatican city state (.va). In 1986, however, the Federal Republic of Germany was one of the first of a total of ten countries that was represented on the Internet. Since then, .de could distinctly extend its leading position and featuring more than 14.6 million registered domains today now clearly holds the first rank among the ccTLDs, followed by Great Britain (.uk) with 9.7 million and the Netherlands (.nl) with 4.7 million registrations. Only the generic TLD .com scores higher than .de with 97.6 million registered domains. Very little known in contrast is .dd, the country code that was reserved for the German Democratic Republic. Due to the German reunification in the year 1989, it was never actually used. You will find detailed tables and maps on the domain evolution in the various geographic areas and cities of Germany at http://www.denic.de/...
The Internet becomes available to the mass public
Initially reserved mainly for scientists and technologists, the Internet started to attract a broader public at the end of the nineties. This interest was driven by developments such as the WWW web browser launched by Tim Berners-Lee and his page description language HTML, which together with the transfer protocol HTTP enabled the Internet as it exists today. Browsers and graphic user surfaces made the medium suitable for mass use. Already then, there hardly was any German enterprise without its own web appearance to communicate a modern image, to advertise its products or services and to test innovative sales channels. About ten years after the launch of .de, computers became available at discount prices and conquered private households. More and more shopping and banking transactions were implemented from home. A new digital market emerged, which was soon discovered and tested also by international groups. For Yahoo, Amazon or Ebay, .de was the one of the first addresses for launching their business model on the international market. 25 years after the introduction of .de, on average 159 of 1,000 German citizens have a .de domain. In purely arithmetical terms, thus every sixth has their own Internet appearance. And also in factual terms, nearly 80 percent of all domain holders are private persons.
A social and economic factor
The Internet does not only generate new business models, also the business procedures have changed considerably. E-mails transfer offers to their recipients by just one mouse click, video conferences accelerate development processes and virtual networks enable teamwork right from the home office. All this is possible thanks to the Internet because it bridges any distance in time and place all over the world. Communication technology and the Internet are involved in nearly every business transaction today. For 2010, the Federal Statistical Office recorded Internet access of 82 percent of all German companies, of course differing according to industry and branch, and regular use of computers with Internet access of 62 percent of all employees. For globally operating groups as well as for the locally operating organic farmer the Internet has become an integral part of business communication. Since the start of the new millennium, an increasing number of private persons is adding content to the Internet. Enthusiastic travellers and amateur photographers, persons testing products at home or young couples with their own wedding site make use of new web offers and self-explanatory user surfaces. In the so-called web 2.0, everybody can become part of the community and contribute to the diversity of the Internet in blogs, forums and digital networks.