I remember that I started thinking about creating a company back in 2006. When I was working at TBS as a web designer and IT technician, the idea of creating my own hosting company started to shape in my mind. The main idea was to offer web design and development services along with hosting and domain names.
As soon as I started doing it as a freelancer, the idea of creating a company became stronger and stronger. A few months later I started searching for a name. I wanted something clever. The idea of just a company name or a brand was not enough for me. I was thinking that this company may start offering just websites and hosting, but it should be built in a way that it would not have any limits. I always had imagination and vision for the future steps. I wanted my own company to be built on such a base!
So I started thinking about names that would reflect that main idea. It had to be a name that would be in relation with the IT industry and the main idea of the Internet and network services and at the same time have an unlimited activity scope. The trend of creating words by using the TLDs (domain extensions) and subdomains was really new at that time. I didn't have exactly that in mind when I was trying to find a name, but I was trying to include a term that gave a "global" sense, would allow others to understand that the company is Internet and/or network related, and be short enough and easy to remember.
The "planet" term was close enough to my idea, but the domain names I had first thought about were taken. Of course the "planet" term was something generic and it couldn't cover very well the point of the Internet/network services related company. I checked the pla.net domain, but it was taken as well. That could have covered that detail as well, but I was unlucky.
Then I thought about the second level country TLDs. The .net.gr TLD was created exactly for companies that are related either to the Internet or to networks. Not everyone was aware of that, but at least those who were involved in IT and Internet used to know that information. So it was a matter of a couple of minutes to come up with pla.net.gr. And that was the final idea. A company name that would be the same as the domain name itself, easy to remember, making clear that is an "interNET" and "NETwork" related GReek company, leaving the "global" sense, as if you ignore the first dot, you can read the word "planet"! I think it was clever to name my company "pla dot net dot gr", but usually called by many people as "planet"... Finally I branded the name as "pla.NET.gr" (capital characters for the middle part), because I wanted to make it clear that it is an interNET related company and it was not called just "planet". That way it was easier to identify it.
