Editing RealNames

{{for|the e-mail service now offered by Tucows since 2014|Tucows}}

{{Multiple issues|
{{more footnotes|date=July 2014}}
{{refimprove|date=July 2014}}
}}

'''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|Microsoft's]] [[Internet Explorer]] [[web browser]] to [[Uniform Resource Identifier]]s, based on the existing [[Domain Name System]], that would access the [[Web page|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|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 $130 million of funding.

RealNames depended on its partnership with Microsoft, which offered the RealNames service on Internet Explorer. RealNames shut down operations in 2002 following a decision by Microsoft to redirect the 1 billion page views per calendar quarter that RealNames was resolving from the browser address bar into the [[Bing (search engine)|MSN search engine]].

In 2014, [[Tucows]] purchased RealNames.com. The domain now hosts a customized e-mail service, made possible by its acquisition of Mailbank and its long list of surname domain names.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://domainnamewire.com/2014/12/11/new-realnames/|title=Blast from the past: Tucows relaunches RealNames (and it's very different) - Domain Name Wire {{!}} Domain Name News & Website Stuff|date=2014-12-11|work=Domain Name Wire {{!}} Domain Name News & Website Stuff|access-date=2018-09-27|language=en-US}}</ref>

== See also ==
* [[Alternative DNS root]]
* [[AOL keyword]]

==References==
<references />

[[Category:Network addressing]]


{{compu-stub}}