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.eu Domain Names Top 2.5M in Year One 101

Posted by samzenpus from the going-like-hotcakes dept.
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."
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.eu Domain Names Top 2.5M in Year One More

.eu Domain Names Top 2.5M in Year One

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  • Of course they got one (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12, 2007 @04:09AM (#18699765)
    You didnt expect them to sit there and let some cybersquatter take it, or worse a rival company did you?

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by 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.

  • And how many people actually used it? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mwvdlee ( 775178 ) on Thursday April 12, 2007 @04:12AM (#18699775) Homepage
    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: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by rudegeek ( 966948 )
      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.

    • Also an EU resident here. Haven't seen a single one.... I pretty much only see country tlds and the generic ones (.com, .net and .org). Especially that my country is very small and still has a lot open names. My dad has one (our last name), but I don't: they simply are extremely expensive in comparison to the generic ones. For the same amount my dad has one domain, I've got three.

      Actually, I'd consider buying my wifes first name as a present within my countries tld, because it's still free. On a ge

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by jovetoo ( 629494 )

      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: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Corporate Troll ( 537873 )

        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 nation

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • That's not the same thing... Nationalities are label, you speak about culture. You can have different cultures within the same nationality.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by CastrTroy ( 595695 )
            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 d

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
              Comment removed based on user account deletion
            • Music:

              Jazz and all its derivatives (blues, rock & roll, rap, etc) are an US phenomenon.
              The minimalist movement (whose major representative is Steve Reich) are perhaps the most influential movement in classical music in the last 30 years (get "Differnet trains" , an authentic masterpiece).

              Writing:

              Great Gatsby. Enough said.

              Painting:

              Andy Warhol? Wistler?

              etc.

              Most people in the US certainly are happy with disposable culture, perhaps in a major percentage that in other places, but there are many great things
              • One book is enough for all culture in writing? One book. Ok, I haven't read it, but even if it is that good, one book doesn't show any semblance of culture. Rock and Roll, I wasn't aware that the beatles were American. There's lots of other rock and roll that doesn't happen in the united states. Plus Rock and roll is such a generic term that form most people it encompasses everything from elvis, to the ramones , to Slayer, to Green Day.
        • I couldn't find more comfort on your writings, mate. Same thing here. EU national living in another country, feeling more European than my native nationality.

          And I don't give a shit about it. I'm in the MTV generation, have grown up with almost the same experiences with my fellow Europeans and I can understand them much more than my parents' generation did. YES, I'll probably register a .eu domain in the near future.

      • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

        by 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
      • When the EU members actually start get things done

        What, as opposed to trivial things like converting to a single currency, you mean?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jovetoo ( 629494 )

          Which is very nice... except that not every country that is part of the EU has actually joined.

          We still don't have a constitution because some states are trying to get an advantage (Poland would be an excellent example) and few are willing to stick their political necks out to defend one.

          And last but not least, what we did accomplish was mostly internal. When it comes to international conflicts like the war in Iraq, we had the UK pinch in, France and Germany complaining... but did you ever hear a unified

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by vidarh ( 309115 )
            I'd suggest you read up on US history. Specifically the period from the articles of confederation until the constitution established the current federal state. The US went through a lot of the same processes, though some of it was simplified in part because there were no entrenched powerful nation states involved.

            In light of that a lot of the infighting between various EU member-states will make a lot more sense.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by squaretorus ( 459130 )
      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%
    • You obviously don't work with anyone working in EU institutions (European Commission, European Parliement, European Counsil, European Central Bank, Committee of Regions just to name some of the big ones all accessible via http://www.europa.eu/ [europa.eu]) that all have a url with ".europea.eu" same goes for all their staff that has an email addrees with "@someinst.europa.eu".

      I, for one, see ".eu" addresses every business day.

  • This isn't much used. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by koreaman ( 835838 )
    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.

  • What else did you expect? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ColdGrits ( 204506 ) on Thursday April 12, 2007 @04:18AM (#18699795)
    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? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Adhemar ( 679794 ) on Thursday April 12, 2007 @04:42AM (#18699927)

      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]...
      • Yes, because heaven forbid anyone actually be *proud* of their country and to be a citizen of said country. What a ghastly thought.
        • Maybe you should check the history of each of those groups before making grossly oversimplified generic patriotic statements? No-one should be a blind patriot.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by vidarh ( 309115 )
          Why would someone be proud of a country they don't want to be a citizen of?
        • Explain why I should be patriotic in any way to my country of origin.

          I'm not even going to give you any counter-arguments (yet), because the burden of proof is clearly on you, as you're the one who'se contending that one should be proud of one's country.

          I'm American. Go.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        .cat is not for catalan pages in general, but for pages concerning their language.

  • What's the point (Score:3, Informative)

    by Silver Sloth ( 770927 ) on Thursday April 12, 2007 @04:28AM (#18699831)
    The only reason I care about a tld is when I'm shopping. For us Brits Amazon.co.uk has lower shipping costs and a faster delivery time than Amazon.com where the goods have to come all the way from the USA. As such I look for .uk tld names to ensure that they are in the same country as me.

    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.

    • Re:What's the point (Score:4, Informative)

      by meringuoid ( 568297 ) on Thursday April 12, 2007 @05:01AM (#18700021)
      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.

    • They may be quicker, but I find the weakness of the dollar means that even if the shipping's more, the overall cost often works out less from the US - at least for those of us in the Euro zone.
    • The only reason I care about a tld is when I'm shopping. For us Brits Amazon.co.uk has lower shipping costs and a faster delivery time than Amazon.com where the goods have to come all the way from the USA.

      Knowing this, what's to stop someone from getting a .eu domain and selling crap from overseas? Near as I can tell the only way it's enforced is when you register they ask for a billing address in the EU. What you do with it seems to be unregulated.

    • ...euroskeptics agree as much as anyone that the EU is first a common market. As such I think there is a benefit of an .eu name for a company that serves primarily the EU (often with the addition of EFTA countries) - and such pan-european retailers are on the rise.

      Work still has to be done here on several fronts to get to a similar open market like the US - delivery, even simple willingness to serve the entire EU, and yes, a common currency. But even as things are I've been buying from all over the last few
  • A new TLD was released and people who missed chance to get .org/.net/.com or Country-TLD are trying to get one? Colour me surprised. ;-)

  • Registration restrictions (Score:4, Informative)

    by sakdoctor ( 1087155 ) on Thursday April 12, 2007 @04:37AM (#18699887) Homepage
    "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: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If I recall correctly, you need to either be a citizen of a European state or you need to have a company with an office located in a European state.
    • Czech Republic, Denmark , Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, Russian Fed, ... among others charge a "Modification fee". I'd never come accross that before.

      cctlds are very popular in their respective countries of course. Just check your rights before registering that Lithuanian or vietnamese domain hack.

      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.

      • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

        by 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

  • Pointless Domain... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by owlnation ( 858981 ) on Thursday April 12, 2007 @04:40AM (#18699915)
    I've lived in a few European countries since the launch of the .eu domain. As with other posters here, I've not seen one single website or link to anything .eu

    Which is not a surprise since no-one speaks Europeaish. If you have a pan European organisation then you need to have sites language specific, and in most countries people are trained to type in .de or .fr or .it before they'd try anything else.

    If you have a .eu site then you have to have either, 1. some sort of portal which is just a list of links to language specific content, which simply means your visitors have to click twice to get to the content they want, or 2. a redirect based on IP - which is seriously annoying - especially if you are not a speaker of the majority language in the country you are currently visiting, this can make it hard, or in fact impossible (hands up everyone who doesn't speak Hungarian), to navigate a page (Google, I'm looking at you, hang your heads in shame).

    So I see the only value in having a .eu site as the following - 1. domain squatters, and 2. the few people who have a business name that ends in "eu" - neu, or bleu, or similar.

    • Re:Pointless Domain... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TERdON ( 862570 ) on Thursday April 12, 2007 @04:56AM (#18699997) Homepage
      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...
    • As if language has anything to do with it. The tlds are meant for geographic/economic regions, nothing else. Many nations have more than one language: China is home to around 50 languages, India has several, Russia dozens, and N. America houses languages from all over the world, not to mention the Native American language. And, to take an extreme example: 500 - 800 languages are spoken in New Guinea.

      The .eu tld is a very valid idea and one that is likely to become increasingly relevant as the EU becomes mor

  • Funnily enough I just let my old company's .eu domain lapse. They didn't use it for anything, and I'm sure it would just confuse people if they had started to (they keep the .com, of course).

    Rich.

  • Longest .eu domain name (Score:2, Informative)

    by Arleo ( 16712 )
    The Welsh village with the longest name in the UK is also one of the few domain names that uses all possible 63 characters allowed for a .eu domain name. Check it out at http://llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllan tysiliogogogochuchaf.eu [llanfairpw...chuchaf.eu]
  • imho all tld's are pointless. Simeply going to http://slashdot/ [slashdot] or http://games.nintendo/ [games.nintendo] would be much simpler.

    All the different tld's like .com, .net, .org, ... are anyway all registered under the same name by the same person. And if they are not, it just causes confusion or it is used for fooling people.

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

    Now-a-days tld's are nothing more than just a way to make money, hence adding new tld's like .tv and .eu which serv

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by aslate ( 675607 )
      Hmmn, idea forming. If i were to go to http://slashdot/ [slashdot] i should get all the sites registered at slashdot.tld appear as a list, perhaps with a small preview thumbnail/description. That way i could plainly see that http://www.ati.co.uk/ [ati.co.uk] isn't the site i want whereas http://www.ati.com/ [ati.com] must contain a UK section (under /uk).

      I am starting to get to a stage where i'm not sure which TLD i need. With two banks i have online banking facilities. However one has http://www.nationwide.co.uk/ [nationwide.co.uk] whereas the .com is a US
      • Would it be too difficult (for someone much cleverer than myself of course) to write a Firefox extension to do exactly that?

    • Re:Pointless (Score:4, Informative)

      by mccalli ( 323026 ) on Thursday April 12, 2007 @05:46AM (#18700259) Homepage
      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 [apple.com] - familiar, right? Here, on the other hand, is http://apple.co.uk [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

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Rocketship Underpant ( 804162 )
        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.

        • And who decides which company called 'Apple' gets to own that name in the first place?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by zobier ( 585066 )

            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.

            And who decides which company called 'Apple' gets to own that name in the first place?

            That would be apple.computer and apple.design then, right? But what if you have a different design company called apple in the UK and the USA...

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mccalli ( 323026 )
          While your point is excellent, that purpose still might be better served with "us.apple" and "uk.apple".

          Indeed, and I completely agree with this. It's the way the UK networks used to be run under JANET (Joint Academic NETwork) in the early nineties. I went to Lancaster University between 1990/1992 - my email address was username@uk.ac.lancs, not username@lancs.ac.uk. Was all switch to internet standard just as I was leaving.

          Cheers,
          Ian

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by vidarh ( 309115 )
          You miss the point entirely. In the Apple example, the owners of apple.com and apple.co.uk are different companies. That is fairly common - there are millions of companies worldwide with clashing names where one company owns the ".com" and one or more other companies own various national TLD's suitable for their markets.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bhima ( 46039 )
      I don't know... I go to a few sites that are site.de, site.at, site.co.uk and I think it helps somewhat.

      Just because I'm reading in German doesn't mean the site is in Austria.

      But I guess you could do the same thing like wikpedia with en.site, de.site....
    • Probably because of there is no internation law on that a company name (for example) can only exist in one country.
      If there would be no TLD's then the companies would either fight for the name or be nice and share the domain (but have different subpages). The second alternative just sounds unlikely. And the first isn't really great either. So therefore I think TLD's is pretty good.
      Oh, and I like being able to just type dell.se to go to the swedish dell and not having to search on the american page (or get
  • will we see slashdot.eu ? :)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by DrogMan ( 708650 )

      will we see slashdot.eu ? :)

      It was registerd last week by "S Consulting" ... So we may never see it, or they might graciously provide a redirect...

      I've registerd 2 .eu's so-far. One for my own domain (because I could) and one for a friend when all the other options had been taken (.me.uk, .co.uk, .org, etc.)

  • The reason I got a .eu domain is quite simple: the .nl was already taken, and the owner didn't want to part with it.

  • EDU spoofs (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Monoman ( 8745 ) on Thursday April 12, 2007 @06:32AM (#18700469) Homepage
    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]

  • Most common IS NOT most popular (Score:4, Insightful)

    by giafly ( 926567 ) on Thursday April 12, 2007 @06:58AM (#18700585)

    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) [guttmacher.org] is the most popular sexually transmitted disease. The real reason companies like mine have registered .EU domains is to defend against cyber-squatting.
  • What does ".eu" represent: the European Union or Europe in general? Perhaps there should be two new domain suffixes .Eu and .EU (note the case). Is this possible? And what about the EEA (European Economic Area? (This is essentially the EU with some others like Switzerland and Norway).Perhaps there could also be a distinction between the old EU countries such as France and Germany and the new such as Bulgaria and Romania. Maybe .neweu and .oldeu. The possibilities are endless
  • So Toyota Motor Corp.'s Lexus for also choosing an ".eu" address".

    Right, load http://lexus.eu./ [lexus.eu.] Immediately redirected to http://www.lexus-europe.com/ [lexus-europe.com].

    That's their best example? What a waste of time. Who actually USES this TLD?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by duvel ( 173522 )
      That's their best example? What a waste of time. Who actually USES this TLD?


      These guys use it extensively: http://www.europa.eu/ [europa.eu] (links to the joined websites of all the European institutions)

  • But, things TFA fails to mention include the fact that many speculators bought hundreds or thousands of .EU domains, over 20% of them don't resolve to anything, and within a few weeks, hundreds of thousands of them snapped up in the initial "land rush" will expire.

    More about it here [dailydomainer.com] in The Daily Domainer [dailydomainer.com].
  • The domain I wanted to register has already been squatted :-(

    Apparently there is a nice expensive appeals process if I feel strongly about it - despite the fact that the domain has been idle since registration.

    Why are domains not considered important for individuals ...
  • Now, if only they had had the foresight to name it the Union of Europe, then I could have registered sq.ue, an excellent domain name.

    Best regards,

    Steve Sque.

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