MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA (Marketwire) - As part of its celebration of 25 years of Internet innovation, VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN) today announced the ".com 25" -- a list of pioneering individuals and companies honored for their contributions to the development of the Internet. The .com 25 honorees, chosen by a group of technology and business experts and commentators, range from AOL to YouTube, reflecting the dynamic evolution of the consumer Internet in its first 25 years.

"Over the past 25 years, the Internet has strengthened communities, transformed economies and allowed people all over the world to come together," said Mark McLaughlin, president and chief executive officer of VeriSign. "All this simply wouldn't have been possible without the vision, talent and creativity of these companies and individuals. The hundreds of millions of people who now use the Internet daily have these trailblazers to thank for the rich online experiences they enjoy today -- most of which were unimaginable back in 1985 when the first .com domain name was registered."

VeriSign, the long-time operator of the .com domain, will pay tribute to the honorees during a gala this evening at the San Francisco City Hall.

The .com 25 honorees are: AOL (Steve Case); Alibaba Group; Amazon (Jeff Bezos); Andy Grove; Apple (Steve Jobs); Baidu; Cisco (John Chambers); Craigslist (Craig Newmark); eBay (Pierre Omidyar); eTrade; Facebook (Mark Zuckerberg); Google (Larry Page & Sergey Brin); Infosys; Jim Clark; Microsoft/MSN/Gates Foundation (Bill Gates); MySpace; Napster (Shawn Fanning); Netscape (Marc Andreessen); Paypal; Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Scott McNealy); Tim Berners-Lee; Twitter; Vint Cerf; Yahoo, (Jerry Yang and David Filo); and, YouTube.

The .com 25 were selected from a group of 75 people and companies nominated for the honor and then ratified by the judging panel composed of business, media, academic and policy leaders. The distinguished panel who selected the .com 25 honorees are:

• Steve Blank, Retired Entrepreneur and Stanford and Berkeley Adjunct Professor
• David Kirkpatrick, Journalist and Author (The Facebook Effect), co-founder of Techonomy
• Kevin Maney, Technology Author and Journalist
• Dan Scheinman, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Cisco Media Solutions Group
• Drew Schutte, Senior Vice President & Chief Revenue Officer, Conde Nast Digital
• Jonah Seiger, Founder, Managing Partner at Connections Media LLC
• Ikhlaq Sidhu, Founding Director of UC Berkeley's Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology

Internet Infrastructure Grants

As part of the celebration, VeriSign today also announced a grant program to promote and foster new research that strengthens the Internet infrastructure. VeriSign will fund four $75,000 research grants to be awarded this fall. The recipients will present their findings at a Washington, DC, symposium in June 2011.

"The Internet is an indispensable part of our lives and is now part of the fabric of society. Therefore, we must continually challenge ourselves to strengthen and secure the platform from which we access it," said McLaughlin. "We look forward to seeing how these researchers propose to advance the Internet infrastructure."

Submissions will be accepted in the following topic areas: overall Internet infrastructure; the domain name system (DNS); DNS security; the internationalization of the Internet, including Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs); and, infrastructure applications.

Those seeking to learn more about the grant program or download the submission form should visit http://www.25yearsof.com/grants. The deadline for submissions is September 15, 2010.

Distinguished judges for the grants include Vint Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google; Michael Chertoff, former Homeland Security Secretary; Rod Beckstrom, President and CEO of ICANN; Paul Mockapetris, computer scientist and inventor of the Domain Name System; and Ken Silva, CTO of VeriSign.

Howdoyou.com Contest

In addition, VeriSign announced a new contest, "How do you .com?," inviting people to share their personal stories of how a .com website has changed their lives. The contest will run through August 31, 2010, and entrants' stories will be voted on by the public as well as by a panel of judges notable in the Internet industry. The Grand Prize is $10,000, First Prize is $5,000, and Second Prize is $2,500. In addition, the contest will feature weekly drawings for an Apple iPad between June 21 and August 31. For more information about the contest go to http://www.howdoyou.com.

About VeriSign
VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN) is the trusted provider of Internet infrastructure services for the networked world. Billions of times each day, VeriSign helps companies and consumers all over the world engage in communications and commerce with confidence. Additional news and information about the company is available at www.verisign.com.

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