Daily Domainer

The first anniversary of the .EU domain's public launch (April 6) has come and gone. The European Commission's spin factory issued a misleading press release today saying, among many other questionable statements, that .EU is an unequalled success:

A year after its launch, 2.5 million Europeans and companies have registered a .eu domain name, making it the seventh most widespread Web site address suffix in the world and the third in the European Union.

While there are indeed 2.5+ million domains registered, it would be interesting to know the actual number of unique registrants (many of whom own hundreds or even thousands of domains). That number of actual registrants is much lower than 2.5 million, certainly less than a million.

Just under 80 percent of registered names are used, rather than bought only to reserve a name, the EU's executive arm said.

That's about 2 million active websites… right? Wrong. "Used", as defined in the press release, means "leads to a functioning website or an email server", and these "functioning websites" include PPC pages or "under construction" pages. The real news here is more than 20% of all .EU domains do not resolve at all!

Finally, the press release does not mention even in passing that hundreds of thousands of .EU domains are expected to expire over the coming weeks. The extent of the fallout will only be seen next month as there's a 40 day grace period for expiring .EU domains.

Media outlets all over the world, even those who should know better, replicated these euphoric "news" under headlines such as EU domain racks up 2.5 million fans, Europe's .eu a soaring success in cyberspace or .eu Storms into Top 10 Web Domains. Here's a telling highlight from the latter article:

One survey indicates that as many as one out of every five Europeans owns a .eu name.

Really? There are as many as 728 million Europeans, 457 million of them being EU residents.

So what does the future really hold for .EU and where's the opportunity for domainers?

As we pointed out in our email newsletter a few days ago, the initial ".EUphoria" has worn off. Under the right circumstances, this could indicate the possibility of obtaining attractive .EU domains at bargain prices. But what's attractive in this extension? Not much at this point! In the large scale of things, .EU domains are not that popular and type-ins even for good .EU domains are almost zero.

If anything, .EU is a long-term play with very little liquidity in the current market. There will be massive losses next month but after that we expect that .EU will resume slow but steady growth.

One of the many problems with .EU is that its registry EURid is a "non-profit entity", with little emphasis on building a sound business or even a professional logo. Other up-and-coming domains such as .mobi are run by capitalists, and the difference is glaring.

.EU will have to succeed despite its registry, and on its own merits, which aren't that good unless important changes are made.

Here are a few ideas to increase the appeal of .EU:

Rebrand .EU to stand for "Europe" rather than "European Union". The EU is highly unpopular within its borders and many companies do not want to be associated with it for fear of backlash on part of their customers. Europe, on the other hand, is a continent and will continue to exist long after the EU has been relegated to the annals of history.

Transfer management of the extension to a Switzerland-based private for-profit company. Switzerland, while being a European country, is not a member of the EU. (Granted, it's not very likely that this suggestion will be implemented, but it would drive home the point. Right now, a Swiss resident can't even register a .EU domain, which seems ridiculous.)

Open up registration to anyone around the world, not just to those with an EU address. There's no point in such a restriction; as we saw last year, those bad, evil, non-European speculators just set up EU-based companies for a few hundred bucks each, while end users from outside the EU who might actually start a real website of interest to Europeans are effectively banned from doing so under the .EU extension.

The only reason for domainers to be interested in .EU right now is for speculation purposes. Will the extension succeed the way it is being run right now? It just might! And that's part of its attraction. .EU was certainly not "stunted by speculators" - on the contrary, it is speculators who bought most of the 2.5 million domains and who are going to keep .EU alive through its ups and downs and against all odds.