With the World Wide Web booming in the late 1990s, two entrepreneurs took advantage of the situation to sell domains at low prices, while others shelled out incredible sums.
The .to domain, the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) of the Kingdom of Tonga, a small island located in the heart of the Pacific Ocean, became a popular resource for many businesses at that time.
With the domain wars in full swing in 1997, Gullichsen and Lyons asked the Crown Prince for permission to begin selling domain names under the country's ccTLD.
It's safe to say the plan took off and led to an increase in enrollment. All he needed was a valid credit card and $100 and he had staked his claim on a small slice of the burgeoning network.
“I collect the names and make sure the servers are up and running,” Lyons said. Time“and spend the rest of the time fixing my boat.”
Domains are a different beast today
Almost 30 years after Gullichsen and Lyons' adventure, the web is a completely different beast. At the time of the .to adventure there were just over a million websites, but within a few years the number had skyrocketed.
Figures from September 2025 showed that there are an estimated 1.2 billion websites worldwide, with approximately 175 websites being created every minute.
Creating a website has never been easier. Web users now have a host of site-building tools and platforms to take advantage of, many of which require just a few clicks to launch a working website.
Meanwhile, domains are just as accessible and cheap, a far cry from the Wild West gold rush of the late 1990s.
