.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

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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.

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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.

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"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.

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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.

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