After establishment in January 1

On January 1, 1993 the National Science Foundation assumed responsibility of maintenance, as com was primarily being used for non-defense interests. The NSF contracted operation to Network Solutions (NSI). In 1995, the NSF authorized NSI to begin charging registrants an annual fee, for the first-time since the domain's inception. Initially the fee was US$50 per year, with US$35 going to NSI, and US$15 going to a government fund. New registrations had to pay for the first two years, making the new-domain registration fee US$100. In 1997 the United States Department of Commerce assumed authority over all generic TLDs. It is currently operated by VeriSign, which had acquired Network Solutions. VeriSign later spun off Network Solutions' non-registry functions into a separate company which continues as a registrar. In the English language the domain is often spelled with a leading period and commonly pronounced as dot-com, and has entered common parlance this way.

985, COM was administered by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). The DoD contracted its maintenance to SRI International. SRI created DDN-NIC, also known as SRI-NIC, or simply "the NIC" (Network Information Center),^[2]) at the domain nic.ddn.mil. Beginning October 1, 1991 it was contracted to Government Systems Inc. (GSI), which sub-contracted it to Network Solutions Inc.