.eu Domains to Go on Sale in a Month

conJunk writes "The BBC is running an article about the start of .eu TLD sales. From the article: 'The .eu domain was launched in December and opens to the public in four weeks. Trademark holders have had a 'sunrise period' since December to register their own trademarks... and all EU institutions will begin using the .eu domain in their web addresses from April next year.' Winners and Losers? Volkswagen scooped Ralph-Lauren for polo.eu by three and a half minutes." Update: 03/10 15:32 GMT by Z : Volvo != Volkswagen.

Volvo Polo

[defsdoor]

Is that for the Volvo Polo then ? (perhaps you meant Volkswagen - the article seems to thing so)

Re:Volvo Polo

[AKAImBatman]

Well, it's not entirely Swedish at this point. It blew my mind when Ford ran a commercial that stated that they were "using their Volvo brand to innovate in exciting new ways." I looked it up, and sure enough. Ford bought out Volvo [wikipedia.org] in 1999.

Re:Volvo Polo

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW, it's SAAB, not Saab. Short for Svenska Aeroplan AB (Swedish Aeroplane Corp.).

Re:organisation?

[jacksonj04]

NomiNET (The .UK registrars) are actually strict about some of the domains. .gov.uk, .edu.uk, .mil.uk and .ac.uk are all quite tightly controlled. .org.uk and .co.uk are fairly open.

Re:Staggered registrations

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's almost as if they acknowledge that there is no "invisible hand of the free market" to keep things in line for them...

Re:organisation?

[redalien]

It is pretty damn simple, some organisations decided to sell third level domains, some second level. This allows the same name to be used in different contexts. The .uk options that I know of are:

.co.uk

COmmercial

.org.uk

ORGanisation

.me.uk

Personal site (clever name, eh?)

.plc.uk

Public Limited Company

.ltd.uk

LimiTeD liability Company

.mod.uk

Ministry Of Defense (Includes all armed forces)

.police.uk

Police, obviously

.gov.uk

Government

.ac.uk

ACademic institutions

.sch.uk

SCHool (this one is broken down more to schoolname.localeducationauthority.sch.uk, so my secondary school was barrbeacon.walsall.sch.uk)

.nhs.uk

National Health Service

Why shouldn't there be a logical distinction between the hospitals in Birmingham [birmingham.nhs.uk] and the government in Birmingham [birmingham.gov.uk]? It just makes sense to me, you wouldn't want birmingham-council.uk, birmingham-nhs.uk, as you wouldn't have a restrictive pattern to ensure uniformity. I once surprised somebody by going to a police website without googling...

"How did you know the URL?"
"Err.. it's the name of the force, followed by .police.uk..."

Registering .EU takes 100 days in my case

[Elixon]

I understand it but what I don't is why it took them exactly 50 days to validate the application - to review my submitted documents. Why? How can they validate the submitted documents printed on my home printer from who-know what source? Probably by checking the on-line databases. There is no other way. Could not they do that before automaticly? They could ask me to fill the link pointing directly to the national database... or they could create a robot to do it it is not so difficult...

Yesterday they accepted my application after 50 days from the date they recieved the documents and 60 days after I applied for the domain. Now I have 40 days long period for ADR before I can use my domain => 60 + 40 = it will take 100 days to register my .EU domain.

As the customer I'm not satisfied with the speed of the service.

Re:.cat: when did that appear?

[paol]

Well, .cat obviously stands for Catalunya. I wonder how they got a TLD. Last time I looked Catalunya wasn't a country.

Anyway, the organization in charge of the domain is here: http://www.puntcat.org/ [puntcat.org]

And cool.cat appears to be available :)