.eu Domain Names Top 2.5M in Year One

VictoryDone writes "More than 2.5 million ".eu" Internet addresses have been registered since the European domain name launched just over a year ago. Many worldwide brands — from companies like Air France and Versace to environmental campaigners Greenpeace — now have a ".eu" address, officials said, singling out non-European brands Sony Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp.'s Lexus for also choosing an ".eu" address in ad campaigns."

Comments

Of course they got one

[Anonymous Coward]

You didnt expect them to sit there and let some cybersquatter take it, or worse a rival company did you?

And how many people actually used it?

[mwvdlee]

I live in the EU and can honestly say that I haven't tried typing a single .eu domain name yet, nor have I seen them in ads or links.

Re:And how many people actually used it?

[Corporate Troll]

The people having the least problem feeling themselves as a "part of the EU" are those EU citizens that do not live in their own country. For most of my life, I have been a foreigner in the country I live and I had no problem identifying myself as a "European Citizen". Heck, I thought that it would be a good idea to drop all nationalities and call ourselves "Europeans". I still think that (but it will never happen), and now I have adopted the nationality of my host country.

I still am not a real national in the eyes of the people living here. My accent gives me away every single time. Heck, even parts of my in-laws family call me the "Dutch Guy" (albeit jokingly), even though I have never been Dutch. Sure, I speak Dutch, but I am not from the Netherlands.

Nationality is a tricky thing and personally, I feel as if I have none. European would be closest, even if my passport doesn't say so.

What else did you expect?

[ColdGrits]

Yet Another (pointless) .tld is launched.

Of COURSE major companies are going to buy their domain name - they can't risk cybersquatters, rivals or people with a grudge buying instead, so they have no option.

However, I can tell you that as someone who lives in an EU country, I have never ever seen anyone publish their .eu domain - companies are registeriung the domains, but they are just using their normal internationally-known existing ones.

The .eu tld is just a money-raising exercise, nothing more.

BTW, I am willing to bet that a lot of the "good" names have already been snapped up by cybersquatters already. Which means the vast majority of domains are either squatters or companies keen to avoid being squatted. Which leaves VERY few "legitimate" .eu addresses in use...

Re: What else did you expect?

[Adhemar]

The .eu tld is just a money-raising exercise, nothing more

I know quite a number of individuals who have their own .eu domain, and prefer that over a domain with their country's TLD for political reasons: because they do not identify themselves too proudly as a citizen of their country.

There are several peoples with some degree of autonomist and secessionist movements in Europe:

• Flanders from Belgium
• Brittany and Corsica from France
• Basque and Catalonia from Spain (however the latter have already the .cat TLD)
• and many others...

Re:This isn't much used.

[JuanCarlosII]

I live in France, and have since September. I interact with French people every day.

... I have since been accepted into the group and having studied them in their natural habitat they appear to have developed a rudimentary form of communication, an advanced social hierarchy, and a range of basic emotions that make them seem almost human.

Registration restrictions

[sakdoctor]

"The registrants must be located within the EU"

Are regulations ever enforced? A little off topic maybe, but yesterday I almost registered a .us domain name.
As I was about to check out I got a different screen to normal. It said that I had to be a business with links to the US,
it also mentioned "all your personal information are belong to (.)us".

Researching it futher I found a right shocker. Swedish (and some others I don't remember) domains often have to pay to change DNS servers. Your rights for a particular domain differ quite a bit with each tld.

Re:This isn't much used.

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Also, sacrebl.eu is still wide open.

Unfortunately, some squatter has already grabbed pepelep.eu...

Re:Pointless Domain...

[TERdON]

Or you could just use the language indicated in the web browser settings. In this case using a country specific TLD doesn't really help in many cases - you'll still have the same problem in countries like Belgium, Switzerland, Finland, Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands, etc, where more than one language is spoken...

Re:What's the point

[meringuoid]

Without wishing to get involved in flame wars about whether the EU is a good thing or not, for the sort of on-line shopping I do membership of the EU is not really relevant.

If you buy CDs it is. The CD-WOW lawsuit established that they can't ship cheap CDs and DVDs here from Hong Kong like they used to, but they can from EU nations. The CD sold by the record cartel in Slovenia is identical to the one sold in England, but a whole lot cheaper.

Re:Pointless

[mccalli]

country-based tld's are only there because of nationalism, every country wanted one...

Nope. Take a look at, say, Apple. Here's http://apple.com - familiar, right? Here, on the other hand, is http://apple.co.uk - rather different. Within the UK, Apple Design have the rights to use it. Within the US, it's Apple Inc. that have the right. This isn't a bug or nationalism, it's a feature. I like location-specific URLs. I don't use google.com for example, I use google.co.uk.

Cheers,
Ian

Most common IS NOT most popular

[giafly]

It has become the seventh most popular suffix worldwide

They mean "most common". Claiming .EU is popular because it has high uptake is like saying chlamidia tracomatis (PDF) is the most popular sexually transmitted disease. The real reason companies like mine have registered .EU domains is to defend against cyber-squatting.