'I collect the names and make sure the servers are running...and spend the rest of the time fixing my boat': Tech entrepreneurs, Tonga, and the lucrative scheme to shake up the world wide web

Purchasing and registering a domain name is easy and cheap in 2025, but in the late 1990s it was chaos

With the world wide web booming in the late 1990s, two entrepreneurs pounced on the situation to sell domains on the cheap while others forked out incredible sums.

The .to domain, the internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) of the Kingdom of Tonga, a tiny island nestled in the heart of the Pacific Ocean, became a popular go-to for many enterprises around this time.

Domains under this ccTLD sold for around $100 dollars under a scheme concocted by entrepreneurs Eric Gullichsen and Eric Lyons. The inspiration behind this, Gullichsen recalled in a 1999 interview with Time, came from the fact the burgeoning web was becoming dominated by top-level domains such as .com, net, and org.