.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."

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.

This isn't much used.

[koreaman]

I live in France, and have since September. I interact with French people every day. I have never seen or heard of a .eu address, and didn't even know they existed until reading this Slashdot article.

Re:Of course they got one

[Anonymous Coward]

That does seem to be the most major reason for getting a .eu domain. Nobody really seems to care that much. Even Microsoft [microsoft.eu] don't really seem to be that interested in having their .eu domain redirect visitors to their main site.

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 [wikipedia.org]...

Re:And how many people actually used it?

[rudegeek]

FWIW they are quite popular for personal uses. Quite a few people I know got lastname.eu because they couldn't get .com/.net/.org -- so most of this sites are blogs, FOSS projects and the like. Companies who got .eu are probably using it just as an alias.

Re:And how many people actually used it?

[jovetoo]

When the EU members actually start get things done (instead of wasting lots of their time preening and jockying for position), people might actually feel part of it and the EU might become a little less abstract. The .eu TLD is unlikely to gain popularity as long as their citizens cannot identify themselves with the EU itself.

As a disclaimer, yes, I am a European citizen.

Re:Registration restrictions

[Anonymous Coward]

And of course in the UK individuals have the right to hide their information on dns lookups. Handy to have the right to do that since its one attack vector for email harvesters.

The opt-out is intended for individuals and I'd support it if only Nominet revoked domains when notified of a spammer (ab)using it. These scum bags threaten the privacy of individual domain registrants because they won't even pay for a PObox or mailing address. I've not once had spam delivered to a hostmaster@ registrant address and address harvesting violates the whois terms of service. If you are the registrant for a domain, it follows that others may have a legitimate reason in wanting to contact you. I think the individuals right to mask their home mailing address and real name is valid, that right doesn't extend to spammers (who are operating commercially) and I don't see email address harvesting from whois as a problem.

Re:And how many people actually used it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, and you are probably the same guy that complains that the EU has too much influence? The EU is getting a whole lot done, what more could they possibly do? EU laws are in all member states, international companies are regulated by EU, there is EU-wide cooperation on the military, major projects are being built across the EU with EU money, etc etc. Have you visited Spain or Greece and seen what is happening with EU money. There is also a lot of regulation to make trade easier across the EU, and you can live in any EU memberstate you like. And that you don't see the .eu TLD might have a different reason. Are you the type of guy that visits relatively new websites? What is the last website you have visited that is less then a year old?

Re:And how many people actually used it?

[squaretorus]

I keep being asked to register .eu domains for people, but they never want to use them for anything new, just to stop others from using them. It would be interesting to see some stats on how many have unique content. I'd guess under 2%

EDU spoofs

[Monoman]

How many of the EU registrations are clear attempts to catch typos looking for an EDU domain traffic. Some are just typo squatters and some are looking for more ...

http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=1866 [sans.org]

Re:Pointless

[Rocketship Underpant]

While your point is excellent, that purpose still might be better served with "us.apple" and "uk.apple". In that case, it would be up to Apple how finely to divide up their regional websites. They might decide to build wales.apple and scotland.apple, for example. In addition to ca.apple, they could have qc.apple for Canada's French region.

Re:And how many people actually used it?

[CastrTroy]

Sounds like America (Canada and the US) to me :). I find it funny that whenever we want tasty food, we go to an Indian, Chinese, Thai, French, Italian restaurant. Or when we want "arts", we go to an Italian opera, or look at French art. . People flock to other countries to eat their food, see their architecture, and art. I'm from Canada, and I find it kind of weird that we have no culture of our own. Maybe it's just because I'm from Canada, and so it just seems like regular life, and not culture, but does anyone else find America devoid of it's own culture?