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Over 1 Million .eu Domains and Counting

Posted by samzenpus on Sat Apr 08, 2006 06:15 AM
from the buy-them-up dept.
The Internet News
gavint writes "In the first 12 hours since "Landrush" registration of .eu Domains begun at 11:00 CET, over 1 million have been registered. Predictions of .eu becoming the second biggest domain after .com look like they may become true, with Nominet being responsible for "over four million" .uk domains, the second biggest namespace. The UK initially led the way during Landrush but have since been overtaken by Germany, with over a quarter of all registered domains. Meanwhile many "Sunrise" period applications where businesses are able to protect domains where they hold a prior right remain unprocessed, although these domains cannot be registered yet during Landrush. Over 1,000 registration agents were only allowed one connection each to EURid's servers in order to prevent problems and ensure fairness."

Related Stories

[+] The .EU Landrush Fiasco 259 comments
googleking writes "Bob Parsons, CEO and Founder of GoDaddy.com, has blogged about the .EU landrush fiasco. During the landrush phase for names which opened last Friday, established 'big name' registrars got exactly equal chances of registering names as did anyone who chose to bill themselves as a registrar. Bob asserts that hundreds of these new 'registrars' are actually fake fronts for a big name US company." From the article: "Here's how it works: All the accredited registrars line up and each registrar gets to make one request for a .EU domain name. If the name is available, the registrar gets the name for its customer. If the name is not available, the registrar gets nothing. Either way, after making the request, the registrar goes to the back of the line and won't get to make another request, until all the registrars in the line in front of it make their requests. This continues until all requests have been made and the landrush process is over ... The landrush process on the surface seems very fair. But there was something wrong with the process -- very wrong."
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  • Hmm (Score:5, Funny)

    by Poromenos1 (830658) on Saturday April 08 2006, @06:18AM (#15090256) Homepage
    How do you pronounce "eu"? If it's how I think it is, "fuck.eu" would be a very nice domain to have.
  • My last name is gone, my first name is gone.

    But I have got gloogle.com ;-)

  • big in GB... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by joe 155 (937621) on Saturday April 08 2006, @06:24AM (#15090268) Journal
    I can't help but wonder with the amount of people registering in the GB, 257,368 at present, if this is meaning people are becoming more accepting of the idea of Britian being considered a part of europe. Normally people really try to avoid any connection between their company and europe because people just don't like to deal with anything from "there"... is the net leading the way towards a greater intergration?...

    • Re:big in GB... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by taskforce (866056) on Saturday April 08 2006, @06:28AM (#15090279) Homepage
      I think many people are going to misinterpret this article. I doubt very much that any more than 10% of the registrations (at a liberal guess) would be actual companies registering .eu domains. Most of these are probably going to be resellers and squatters, which is why the UK proportion is so high.

      I can't think of any reason why a UK company would buy a .EU domain unless it was out to alienate it's customers, market to the rest of the EU under a different domain, or simply just bought every TLD for it's domain name.

      [ Parent ]

    • Re:big in GB... (Score:3, Funny)

      by Haeleth (414428)
      I can't help but wonder with the amount of people registering in the GB, 257,368 at present, if this is meaning people are becoming more accepting of the idea of Britian being considered a part of europe.

      Even UKIP.eu is registered! Truly we must be on the
    • The young are a lot more "into" computers. IME as a brit anyone under about 30 thinks Europe is a great thing, while those over 50 don't want anything to do with it.

      • Re:big in GB... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by ickoonite (639305) on Saturday April 08 2006, @06:36AM (#15090301) Homepage
        Two words: island mentality. The Japanese have a similar view of the Asian mainland.

        I am no geographer, but one should not underestimate the fundamental importance it has in shaping the human experience.

        iqu :|
        [ Parent ]

        • Re:big in GB... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Wellington Grey (942717)
          Yes I am an American (though I moved to London [wellingtongrey.net] three years ago). It still seems odd to me to hear my English co-workers talking about what is going on in Europe. To me it would be like hearing New Yorkers talk about taking a trip to America.

          -Grey

          • Re:big in GB... (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Haeleth (414428)
            It still seems odd to me to hear my English co-workers talking about what is going on in Europe. To me it would be like hearing New Yorkers talk about taking a trip to America.

            But I thought New Yorkers think New York is America? :P

            A better example would b

            • Re:big in GB... (Score:2, Informative)

              by bogjobber (880402)
              Well that's slightly different. Hawaii had absolutely no cultural or geographic link to the Americas before about 150 years ago. Hawaii is also much further away from the US than Great Britain is from Europe. You can't exactly ride the train from Honolu

  • Question: (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Wellington Grey (942717)
    Call me ignorant, but where does all the money for .eu (and the endless .whatever's to come) go? Is it payed into the European Union or some private company?

    -Grey [wellingtongrey.net]

    • Re:Question: (Score:2, Informative)

      by floorpirate (696768)
      A good portion of the money for a domain goes to whatever organization/company runs the registry. It pays for their staff, equipment, Net connection, etc. Don't know what the .eu domains actually cost, but for most domains, usually around half goes to the

  • Is this a case of... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 08 2006, @06:24AM (#15090273)

    The UK initially led the way during Landrush but have since been overtaken by Germany

    ... get your towel off my domain name?

  • Domain Squatting (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cheetah_spottycat (106624) on Saturday April 08 2006, @06:30AM (#15090284)
    Is anyone surprised? I bet that these are 5% "real" registrations, and 95% domain squatters trying to register every single word from the encyclopedia britannica and all TLAs from 'AAA' to 'ZZZ' in one session.
    • yep, mine pretty obscure one has been squatted.
    • Dunno how well organized the hardcore squatters are, but i managed to snag a nice 3-character domain 19 hours into the landrush.

      • Re:.eu is useless, it's a domain DMZ (Score:5, Insightful)

        by mikeplokta (223052) on Saturday April 08 2006, @06:44AM (#15090316)
        If you can't think of any grocery stores in more than two EU countries, you're not thinking very hard. Try Aldi and Lidl, who both operate in numerous EU countries. In other sectors, there are chains like IKEA.
        [ Parent ]
      • Actually flickr.eu shows as application pending to Yahoo on whois.eu, but I agree with you about feedburner.

        I tried to register three .eu domains which are fairly meaningless to all but myself; I had the registrations in in advance waiting for the landrush
      • Uhm, Tesco?

        But I see your point, I own various .com/.net/.co.uk domains but can't think of a single reason to register any of them under .eu. But there are many companies that operate throughout the EU and they might find it very interesting to use .eu for

  • EU is such a silly idea... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Jugalator (259273) on Saturday April 08 2006, @06:38AM (#15090303) Journal
    Why not... .UN! All members in the United Nations can register one! :-p
    Redundancy and more redundancy for the domain registrars to make money...

    • Re:EU is such a silly idea... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by wizzdude (755000) on Saturday April 08 2006, @06:51AM (#15090327)
      Well, not entirely.

      The European Union is a free trade area so there are import/export duties on goods traded with the zone. There are some businesses who would therefore treat this entire area as one and for them branding themselves under an EU domain would make sense.

      A UN domain would never be used for that reason as it is purely political and not economic.
      [ Parent ]

  • uk second biggest domain after .com? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 08 2006, @06:41AM (#15090309)
    According to Nominet http://www.nic.uk/ [www.nic.uk] it's only the forth biggest namespace, not second.
    As far as I know, Germany (over 9.5 million .de-domains) has the second largest namespace.
    • FTS:

      "Predictions of .eu becoming the second biggest domain after .com look like they may become true,"

      They didn't say it was the second biggest, they said it is predicted that .eu will become the second biggest.
      • "Predictions of .eu becoming the second biggest domain after .com look like they may become true, with Nominet being responsible for "over four million" .uk domains, the second biggest namespace."

        It seems to me that the grammar's a bit strange there, but i

  • Sex (Score:2)

    by quokkapox (847798)
    One million new domains?! Eeek! Don't worry, we can still restrict pr0n to just the .xxx domain and happily dance with our properly clothed children in the meadow of Puritanical safety which is .[com|net|org|edu]

    Or something like that. You Europeans

  • Don't mention the landrush (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The UK initially led the way during Landrush but have since been overtaken by Germany, with over a quarter of all registered domains.

    Don't worry, in a couple of years the US will join in and help us take them all back.

  • In Soviet Russia... (Score:4, Funny)

    by borgdows (599861) on Saturday April 08 2006, @06:48AM (#15090321)
    insovietrussiadomainsregister.EU !!

  • some .eus :) (Score:3, Informative)

    by tomasvilda (818284) on Saturday April 08 2006, @06:52AM (#15090328)
    http://www.google.lt/search?q=site:.eu [google.lt] -- http://stilius.net/ [stilius.net]

  • Big mistake because they apparently just held the registration until April 7th instead of helping with any sort of actual registration, so I discover that half a dozen businesses are ahead of me now in the queue.

      • GoDaddy had no link to landrush or sunrise, but only added .eu as a domain you could purchase.

          • The smaller the registrar, the more-likely they would be able to reserve the name you want since every registrar got one connection regardless of how many names they served.
            • Indeed. I know people who made the mistake of going with the big players, only to find out that their wanted names had been taken as soon as 6 minutes after the start of Landrush.

              Even hours later, 1&1 hadn't registered names that were still free. 18 an
              • Eclipse knew what they where doing ... they offered 1000 free .eu domains. I went and got five of them (this was a week before landrush) and, despite the fact that those domains where free for a good few hours, I lost all but one because Eclipse where far

  • It wasn't fair! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Cronq (169424)
    "Over 1,000 registration agents were only allowed one connection each to EURid's servers in order to prevent problems and ensure fairness."

    Fairness? Please check official registrars list on the eurid web site. There are tons of clons there sharing the same
  • Someone seems to have got up early on 7th to register thank.eu [whois.eu].

    And fuck.eu [whois.eu] too.

    Damn.

    Rich.

  • When are they going to be active? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by drwho (4190) on Saturday April 08 2006, @12:31PM (#15091440) Homepage Journal
    I registered 8 .eu domains on friday. I got my last name, three three-letter domains, and my company name. I used godaddy for them all. They're still "Pending Application" - I wonder how much BS I am going to have to go through before any or all of these are active. I would have thought with all that 'sunrise' stuff that any checking as far as an existing legitimate claim would have been taken care of already, and that the domains would be active within a couple of hours.

    I did use a European address and phone number, but maybe they are checking on a business registered at that location? How much do they really care?

    Is anyone else having this type of trouble? Has anyone else been successful in getting a .eu domains with a less-than-perfect contact address?
    • I feel funny replying to my own mesage, but -- does anyone know of a free (or dirt cheap) VoIP service with voicemail that can provide me a phone number in Leipzig, Germany (country code 49, city code 341)? How about a mail drop service?
    • What does that say about France's EU feeling?

      Not much, I think ; historicaly, *.fr has been reserved to chartered companies and trademarks holders, so many french individuals had to buy a .com or .net already. Many companies did, too,because .fr is f*ck

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