Shortly after EURid the .eu top-level domain (TLD) registry, sent out a glowing press release marking the domain’s fifth birthday, TechCrunch blasted the extension and the press release in a post entitled “3.4 Million .EU Domain Names Registered In Five Years I Call Dismal Failure”
In the Press release EURid said:
“Today we celebrate .eu’s public launch five years ago. Steady growth since then has reinforced .eu’s position as one of the world’s ten largest top-level domains,” said Marc Van Wesemael, General Manager of EURid. “This proves that .eu gives companies an effective means to present themselves online as open for business across Europe.”
“Five years on and going strong”
“EURid celebrated .eu’s fifth anniversary at the European Parliament in Strasbourg with a birthday cake cutting ceremony yesterday.”
TechCrunch appearently didn’t get a piece of the cake saying in its post today:
“Is it really an achievement worth crowing about? I beg to differ.”
“Let’s look at the raw numbers, shall we?”
“Less than 3.4 million .eu domain names have been registered to date. To put that in perspective, half of those (that would be 1.7 million) were registered in April 2006, the first month of availability. That means it effectively took five years for the number of domain names that were secured within the first month of availability to double. Five. Years.”
“How many companies do you know that actively advertise their .eu domain name rather than the .com or the local country domain? How many times have you thought of a good domain name and immediately thought to yourself: I need to get the .eu domain name, pronto.”
You can read the rest of the TechCrunch Story here.
not so many domains for a market that has over 500,000,000 people in 27 countries
maybe, the .EU registrars need a better (.CO-like) PR agency 🙂
anyhow, I’ve registered some .EU domains
People think and act more local. Europeans think of themselves with individual identities, not as europeans.
.ASIA has the same problem.
Same can be said for domains like FloridaCabinets.com as opposed to OrlandoCabinets.com. When a surfer wants cabinets he generally looks for cabinets near where he lives, not some broad geo category like “Florida”. FloridaCabinets.com though makes for a great brand…..just a different approach where the local part means less.
One thing I’d really love to know – simple question; are the officials at Google prone to fibbing? Constantly we here Google reps say things like .edu domains hold no more weight as far as SEO goes. They say age of domain doesn’t have a factor – yet people in SEO almost universally dispute it. In throwing SEO pros off the scent, would Google just basically lie?
There was a time (a .DAY & .AGE) when 50,000 registrations was viewed as “enough” to run a Registry
That was back when .COM still did not have the magic 1,000,000
People seem to have lost track of reality and how simple DNS…was
The problem with .eu is that it has all the downsides of a ccTLD and none of the benefits.
Properly run and regulated, it could have had at least ten times the number of registrations it has now. In real terms, it occupies less than 10% of individual EU country level domain markets. But when all these country level .eu registrations are added up, it allows .eu to pretend to be a global player. Apart from Brand Protection registrations and potentially cheap EU-wide marketing, there really isn’t much going for .eu ccTLD as most EU countries use their own ccTLDs and .com as for most of their registrations.
“The problem with .eu is…”
===
Cut to the quick…EU was a political MOVE made at a time when TLD Wannabees were being told it is really really hard to –\__fork-lift__ a new TLD into “the Root”
Many people in CyberSpace do not buy into (or recommend) paying any attention to .EU
People do not believe this (as of 2011) but ICANN is likely headed to the same fate
KIDS will not tell other KIDS they need to run to an ICANN Meeting
.EU was also a Pay.OFF to Loyalists who did not have a Gravy.Boat in the Eco.System
Follow the MONEY – 3.4 Million Registrations is not Pigeon Sh%$+
.eu is a good alternative to ccTLDs and for sure it is even better alternative to .com in Europe. Look how many .eu sales are there on Sedo. This is one of the mostly traded TLD. I think .eu is a success and it has quite bright future. BUT the less domainers believe in this extension, the better for the .eu 🙂
Slow and steady is better than boom and bust.
Many TLDs are tied to a few people (personalities).
For other people, that is a showstopper.
The general public (uninformed) may think TLDs are government-run.
.COM may be the only TLD that is truly government-run.
Even with .COM people can not answer the simple question: “Who owns your .COM domains?”
“Who owns your .EU domains?”
.EU also helped to build these fantasy worlds & structures that people really believe are reality
://www.circleid.com/posts/registrar_stakeholder_group_gnso_works_against_icann_multistakeholder/
How can ICANN deal with the growing population of people who construct castles in the air & expect people to play dungeons and dragons with them ?
Hi,
IMHO…as always 😉
James…. ” Slow and steady is better than boom and bust.”….
If registrations of the .EU extension goes any slower, anyone that is 10 years old and above will be dead….before they reach 10 million .EU domains Registered.
‘Boom & Bust Has Already Happened For’ “.EU”
_____
The Tech Crunch article is 100% ‘spot on’…. The .EU countries have almost double the population of the USA… If they thought this domain extension was going to help usher in and new world or global order…and unify all the “EU” countries…they miss the mark by miles….
Just like they have done with the Euro….they introduce this, thinking it would end up replacing the US dollar as the worlds “reserve currency”…problem is, it is as bad or worst shape than the US Dollar now… “best laid plans”
Most the countries in the EU are almost bankrupt… (the US is not that far behind them… BTW)
Only difference is that… most of the EU countries are being over taken by “Muslims” …. some very fine upstanding citizens, but a lot/most are and have imposed very radical ideas, such as “sharia law” etc…
All you have to do is read…what is happening to the UK/London…and many other countries in the “EU”
Now, “sharia law”…. is slowing making its way into the USA…
So, I say ICAAN comes out with a couple new domain extensions for the “European Union”…. and other, mostly Muslim countries.
Let me suggest:
.un (United Nations)
.sl (Sharia Law)
.rm (Radical Muslims)
.jh (Jihad)
.gs (Great Satin…USA)
.ls (Little Satin….Israel)
.ps (Palestine)
.k (koran)….this would get double+ of all the current .EU registrations within 3-6 days.
Sorry, but that is the ‘real world’ we now find ourselves living in 2011…
Wish it was NOT so, but ‘the truth is the truth even if you choose not to beleive it.’
I know a lot of domainers are from “Canada”… Its all working its way into your country also.
So, Bottom line the .eu extension is going no where fast, I bet in the next 5 years registrations drop way, way below the 3.4 million registered the past 5 years.
Peace To All ~ On this happy note.
Dan
@Daniel
I think that .eu is replacing .com’s position as the default TLD in many of the newer EU countries. I’ve been doing some mapping of each EU country’s gTLD (and some ccTLD) domain footprint based on hosters and domain names and .eu is effectively flatlining in terms of growth thoughout much of the EU. (Comparing .eu growth against ccTLD and gTLD growth in those countries makes it look worse.) The main engines driving .eu registrations for 2011 are Germany, Netherlands and France. For 2010 it was Germany, Netherlands, France, Italy, Poland and the Czech Republic. Some of the 2010 gains were due to IDNs. However looking at this month’s stats, it is possible that some IDNs are dropping already.
In usage terms (from my work each month in surveying and classifying about 300K Irish websites), the Irish websites are focused on the .ie/.com axis. This ccTLD/com axis is the same for all EU countries. However usage of .eu domains in Ireland is very low and more like .biz usage in percentage terms. Most Irish .eu domains are parked on PPC, or left pointing to the main brand website (.ie or .com). Some registrants don’t even bother to set them up in DNS. This lack of usage is a killer for .eu as a viable extension. There’s another interesting aspect in that there are more Irish hosted .co.uk domains than there are Irish hosted .eu domains. This adjacent market effect is also present in other adjacent EU countries such as France/Belgium/Netherlands and Germany/Austria. The traditional language areas produce a common and localised market that crosses borders so businesses will register their domain in their local ccTLD and in the ccTLD nearby if it is available.
There’s been no real development of the .eu in terms of large pure-play websites using it as their primary brand. In footprint terms, the .eu only has between 10% and 1% of most of the EU country level domain footprints. Compare the size of .pl and the numbers of Polish .eu registrations, or the number of .de registrations and the number of German .eu registrations. This is a problem for visibility because it puts .eu in with the third or fourth choice TLDs of .net, .org, .biz, .info, .mobi etc. As a result, people are less likely to use .eu websites (apart from the official/propaganda EU sites). They are less likely to recognise .eu as an extension. Eurid, despite all its pretensions at being a global player on the same level as DEnic, SIDN and Nominet, is still very much a small ccTLD registry in terms of strategy and marketing. The EU is approximately 27 different markets rather, than as most early non-EU speculators thought, a single market. Eurid’s marketing efforts have reflected its origins as a small ccTLD registry (it was effectively an offshoot of DNS.be, the Belgian ccTLD registry).
I think that .eu is depending on brand protection registrations for much of its registration volume. Development in the ccTLD is a big problem and it will take years to turn it around. Perhaps the best thing would be the redelegation of .eu to a new registry with a reconsideration of the regulations (open the .eu to a much greater extent and deal with the mess created by the EU commission, Eurid and their intellectual property mangling system). It is probably the only way to restore confidence in the .eu and drive natural development in the ccTLD.
A good domainer market in a ccTLD can only exist when there is natural development and widespread usage. The .com is an exception because of its size and the fact that it has a major historical position in each country level market. These are missing from .eu so I doubt that the few sales on Sedo give a reliable indication of the state of .eu ccTLD.