[Archive]

Posted By: Miguel Danielson

Actually, X.com is, I believe, one of the only single letter domain names that was allowed to get into public circulation. The others were reserved by IANA, which originally ran the .com TLD. ICANN now controls their destiny and has, thus far, locked them up for some future use down the road. When I was in law school, a class I had on Internet Law had some big whigs from ICANN as guest speakers and they mentioned (this was around 2000) that one thought was to auction the domain names to raise funds for ICANN's operations.

In any event, as regards PayPal, that service was in fact formerly known only as X.com, and I believe there was either an acquisition or merger involved. Since that time, X.com simply points to PayPal's website.

I remember using X.com before PayPal was even around, and if I recall, that's actually when I signed up for my account.

Regards,
Miguel