Steve Jobs, Digg, Others up for .Com 25 Awards — Al Gore

Politicians and instrumental web firms nominated for awards.

As part of a year long celebration of the 25th anniversary of .com, domain registry VeriSign today disclosed nominees for its “.com 25”. There are 75 nominees; a panel of judges will whittle it down to the “.com 25”. The public is invited to show support for nominees to help the judges.

Winners will be disclosed at a gala in San Francisco this May, hosted by comedian Dana Carvey.

Among the nominees are Al Gore, who was instrumental in the commercialization of the web (no joke), Vint Cerf (of ICANN and later Google), Steve Jobs, and James Gosling (creator of Java).

In addition to people, there are a number of firms nominated. Web 2.0 favorites include Digg and Flickr. E-commerce nominees include Amazon.com, Zappos, and Overstock.com. Of course, the web has also transformed dating. So it’s only fitting that Match.com and eHarmony are nominated. Blogs on the list include the Gawker network and celebrity site TMZ. Representing social networks are Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn.

You can read more regarding each nominee and rate them at 25YearsOf.com.