.eu Storms into Top 10 Web Domains

By Ed Oswald | Published April 11, 2007, 12:28 PM

The .eu domain has become one of the most popular in the world only a year after its launch, ranking third most common in the European Union.

About 2.6 million domain names have already been registered, the European Commission reported on Wednesday. One survey indicates that as many as one out of every five Europeans owns a .eu name.

Germany holds the most registrations, with 795,000 domains. It is followed by the United Kingdom, with 439,000, and the Dutch with 320,000. Registrations are limited to EU residents, and cost between 10 to 30 euros ($13.37-$40.11 USD) per year.

.eu was opened to the public in April of last year following a six-month period where businesses got priority on their copyrighted and trademarked names. The EC claimed that some 700,000 registrations were received in the first four hours alone.

80 percent of those domains purchased are running a website. Only .uk and .de are more popular than .eu, although as preliminary statistics show, those countries also carry the highest .eu registration rates as well.

Comments

View comments by with a score of at least

That's because a bunch of yahoo's have purchased up all of the Top domain names... or the most likely popular or catchy names and will auction them off for a profit.

Score: 0

|

You're darn right on that one. Trying www.internet.eu in the browser comes up with an Error:404, but a search for that name on www.whois.eu comes up with "registered".

Rotten site squatters.

Score: 0

|

"2.6 million domain names have already been registered"
"one out of every five Europeans owns a .eu name"
I'm thinking them figures don't add up.

Score: 0

|

Yea, they don't add up because there's more than 13 million people in the EU. In fact, there's about 500 million overall.

Score: 0

|

Will Firefox beat IE9 to Direct2D rendering?

Just days after Microsoft executives gave conference attendees a peek at a new rendering technology, a Mozilla contributor revealed he's working on the same thing.

AOL's decision to rebrand as Aol. takes a bad brand and makes it worse

The idea behind the social Web is to crowd source before bringing out something new. But not at AOL, which new logo debuted with a cry of "fail!" across the blogosphere and Twittersphere today.

Microsoft's Bob Muglia and Ray Ozzie on Silverlight vs. standards

Bob Muglia: "We're trying to provide people with an environment that has capabilities that you just simply can't do today in the standards-based world."

Uh-oh, netbooks -- not Windows 7 -- will lift 2009 PC sales

Santa may bring a lump of coal to the Windows PC industry this holiday season. Netbook sales will sap PC margins, while weak Windows 7 PC sales could further drive down average selling prices.

Kindle 2 update adds battery life, native PDF reader

Amazon has pushed out an update to the Kindle 2 e-reader that lengthens battery life and adds a native PDF viewer.

Safari on iPhone gets competition from a $1 browser app

Apple likes to say it gives iPhone users a full browsing experience, but a new competitor tries to incorporate more desktop browser features.

Action Replay maker sues Microsoft for Xbox 360 'predatory technological barriers'

Third-party video game accessory maker Datel has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft over the Xbox 360's recent Dashboard update.

Where there's smoke: Apple warranty stance raises troubling questions

Carmi Levy | Wide Angle Zoom: Smoking can be dangerous not only for your lungs, it appears, but for your Apple hardware warranty.

Microsoft's .NET Micro Framework is now free and open source

The latest version of Microsoft's .NET Micro framework is now in the hands of the FOSS community.

Google's value proposition for Chrome OS: Should we feel insulted?

For a search engine that has direct access to all the world's online history, it appears to have taught Google nothing about selling a machine.

E-book readers will be in short supply this holiday season

E-readers are hot this year, and a lot of compelling new products have been released, but are there enough electrophoretic displays to go around?