Over 1 Million .eu Domains and Counting

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."

big in GB...

[joe 155]

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?...

Question:

[Wellington Grey]

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:big in GB...

[ickoonite]

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 :|

Re:.eu is useless, it's a domain DMZ

[googleking]

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 to open but it seems like other people got them. In two cases the lucky winners are people with names like "thisdomainforsale.com" and in the third, whois.eu gives an address in China - I've no idea how that can have happened.

So in my experience, .eu has just become yet another cybersquatter/Sedo hell, which is a shame; I had hoped that the higher cost of .eu domains (the cheapest I've seen is 5 GBP per year but the average registration cost seems to be 15-20 EUR) would prevent most of the speculator scum.

Re:Other info that would have been nice...

[TCM]

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 and a half hours(!) later those names were finally registered.

Smaller registrars were said to have completed their whole(!) procedure after 17 minutes of the start.

When are they going to be active?

[drwho]

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?

Re:linux.eu

[Tacvek]

The address given belongs to "Gille, Hrabal, Struck, Neidlein, Prop & Roos".

Gille, Hrabal, Struck, Neidlein, Prop & Roos is a German patent/trademark law firm. I would assume that if the registration is valid, the firm is acting on Linus's behalf.

Also note that they registered in their own name also. A bit strange.
If they are acting on behalf of Linus, they will most likely (or hopefully, anyway) be granted the domain.