RealNames
Encyclopedia
RealNames was a company founded in 1997 by Keith Teare
. Its goal was to create a multilingual keyword-based naming system for the Internet that would translate keywords typed into the address bar of Microsoft's
Internet Explorer
web browser to Uniform Resource Identifier
s, based on the existing Domain Name System
, that would access the page registered by the owner of the RealNames keyword.
In effect, to users of Internet Explorer, RealNames became a domain registry which was capable of registering names that worked without needing to belong to a top level domain such as ".com" or ".net". RealNames and its backers expected this to be a lucrative source of income, and it raised more than $130m of funding for its venture.
RealNames was dependent on maintaining its association with Microsoft that enabled the RealNames service on Microsoft's web browser. RealNames shut down operations in 2002 following a decision by Microsoft to redirect the 1 billion page views per calendar quarter that RealNames were resolving from the browser address bar into the MSN search engine.
Keith Teare
Keith Teare is a British technology entrepreneur.He has founded or co-founded many successful companies since the early 1980s.He is credited with being part of:...
. Its goal was to create a multilingual keyword-based naming system for the Internet that would translate keywords typed into the address bar of Microsoft's
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer
Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...
web browser to Uniform Resource Identifier
Uniform Resource Identifier
In computing, a uniform resource identifier is a string of characters used to identify a name or a resource on the Internet. Such identification enables interaction with representations of the resource over a network using specific protocols...
s, based on the existing Domain Name System
Domain name system
The Domain Name System is a hierarchical distributed naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participating entities...
, that would access the page registered by the owner of the RealNames keyword.
In effect, to users of Internet Explorer, RealNames became a domain registry which was capable of registering names that worked without needing to belong to a top level domain such as ".com" or ".net". RealNames and its backers expected this to be a lucrative source of income, and it raised more than $130m of funding for its venture.
RealNames was dependent on maintaining its association with Microsoft that enabled the RealNames service on Microsoft's web browser. RealNames shut down operations in 2002 following a decision by Microsoft to redirect the 1 billion page views per calendar quarter that RealNames were resolving from the browser address bar into the MSN search engine.