Since its launch in February 1971, the Nasdaq Stock Exchange has grown to include more than 3,000 companies on what is now the largest purely electronic global exchange in the world.

Nasdaq's own embrace of the digital revolution, meanwhile, has helped make this stock exchange the home of many of the world's leading-edge producers of technology-based goods and services, from promising start-ups to the largest publicly traded companies in the U.S.

The Nasdaq Composite index also has become one of the three major indexes that track the U.S. stock market and a useful benchmark by which to compare an individual component's performance. And by that measure, data center operator Equinix (NASDAQ: EQIX) has held its own while providing a reliable stream of dividend income along the way, and building one of the largest digital infrastructure operations in the world.

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Source Fool.com