Exodus: 8% of .EU Domains Drop
Just over twelve months ago, .eu domains were made available to the public amid much fanfare. After all, this new domain extension represented the largest economy of the world. However, there were a few obstacles.
First, there was the small problem that no one really knew what to do with .eu. The European Union is not a country. Instead, it is a fairly loose confederation of sovereign nations.
Have you ever asked an Irishman, Italian or German where they are from? Have the ever responded, “I’m from the European Union”? Of course not. Europeans identify with their nation, and some define themselves further by region or province. This nationalism extends even onto the Internet in the form of ccTLDs.
For example, a recent study from YouGov shows that 72% of United Kingdom residents would visit a .uk web address above any other TLD. 62% of those surveyed believe the .uk address represents a more local company and a company the respondents have more trust in. The real crux of the issue is where these users will go when they do venture out of their “home” ccTLD. If one is willing to trust a company in a country half a continent away, how is that different than a company in the United States or Japan? In short, what, if anything, is special about .eu that makes it more attractive to a European than .com or .biz?
Next, there was the problem of properly registering .eu domain names to companies and individuals. EURid, a non-profit organization, was created to administer the new domain. EURid is a conglomerate of three existing European ccTLD operators: DNS Belgium, IIT-CNR (Italy) and NIC-SE (Sweden). Following creation of EURid, a Sunrise Period was held to allow applicants with rights based on trademarks, geographic names, company names, trade names and personal names. This process was similar to the Sunrise Period held for the launch of .info. In the first hour of the Sunrise Period, over 71,000 domain names had been registered.
So far, so good. On April 7, 2007 the domain was made available to the general public. Many large registrars allowed customers to put their request into a queue, thereby ensuring the best shot at registering desirable domain names. Due to these queues, more than 700,000 domain names were registered in the first four hours. That is not to say that the “landrush” launch was without its critics. Bob Parsons, GoDaddy.com CEO, was especially vocal about the large number of shell companies or phantom registrars created to jump the lines at large registrars. These phantom registrars effectively crowded out the customers of established registrars. As a result, many generic .eu domain names are in the hands of these shell companies’ backers.
In general, EURid was dismissive of Parsons’ comments and heralded the launch as a success. In July 2006, EURid did seem to make some steps to clean up their registry. They suspended over 74,000 domain names, registered through 400 registrars to just three Cyprus-based companies. It looked like EURid was getting serious about policing domain name warehousing. However, the affected registrants and registrars took their case to an EU court and all accounts and registrars were placed back into good standing. With the press given the original suspension, it was now clear to outside observers that EURid had a problem with warehousing and lacked the legal teeth to do anything about it.
Still, more than 2.5 million .eu domains were registered, so someone must have been interested, right? Better still, “Just under 80 percent of registered names are used, rather than bought only to reserve a name” claims the executive arm of the EU. This sounds good, and it would be, if it were true.
Remember that EURid is a conglomerate of DNS Belgium, IIT-CNR and NIC-SE and is using the DNS Belgium renewal system. This processes expirations at month end, not daily. Thus, many domain names registered in the post-launch euphoria of April 2006 expired yesterday. As of today, just over 2.3 million .eu domain names are active. Since the publication of congratulatory articles that read like press releases straight from the front office of EURid, about 200,000 .eu domain names have gone the way of the dodo. That’s a massive drop of more than 8%.
Further disputing EURid’s spin is the fact that their own 2006 Annual Report (pdf file) states that 54% of .eu domain names are registered to companies or individuals with more than 5 domains. 1345 registrants hold 100 or more .eu domain names and 6 registrants hold more than 10,000 .eu domain names each. Given these statistics, the “80% use” claim by the EU seems optimistic at best. Factor in the fact that the EU considers use to be any form of parking or monetizing and the actual development of the .eu domain looks even hazier.
What will become of .eu? It isn’t going anywhere. It is the “official” domain of European Union agencies and organizations. Will it ever be .com? Never. Will it ever become a suitable substitute for Europeans to local ccTLD’s? That depends upon the administration and marketing of EURid. However, given the setback suffered when they attempted a crackdown on warehousing, the outlook is not so bright at this point.
Do you actually know anything about the domain industry? How can you seriously suggest that a 92% renewal rate is a bad
thing? The average renewal rate for .uk names is about 70%. Compared to that, 92% is clearly an achievement.
Jon, I don't think that you really appreciate the damage that EURid's mismanagement has done to .eu ccTLD. Well over 54% of the .eu is warehoused and potentially squatted (according to EURid's own statistics), mainly by front companies mainly acting for a number of non-EU players such as Jay Westerdal (of domaintools.com), Ray King (ex-ceo snapnames.com) using eight UK front companies, Marchex (using an Irish front company), Michael Berkens (via Malls Limited), Momentous.ca (using an front Irish company). One of the biggest warehouser/aggregator operations is Ovidio with an estimated holding of over 75K .eu domains. Other warehousing/aggregator operations exist within the EU. The individual and business holdings in .eu prior to the Junk Drop of recent days was roughly 1.2M .eu domains. These were registrants with under six domains registered each and represent the core business and individual registrant of .eu domains. For the vast majority of EU businesses and citizens, the .eu ccTLD is an irrelevance.
As for the idea that the renewal rate is 92% is an achievement - that's rubbish. When you break down the renewal rates over the various countries, some countries such as the UK are dumping .eu at an alarming rate. Others such as the new EU states are growing but they only went active in January this year. Over 100K UK registered .eu domains were dropped in April. That's nearly 21% of the UK's .eu footprint. The renewal process for .eu is automatic. The registrant has to stop the process. Without that intervention, the domains are automatically renewed. And as for the piece of junk that EURid uses for its registry software - try looking up the expiry date of a domain in the whois. It cannot calculate a "domain year" so all domains registered in a month are renewed on the end day of month of the anniversary of their registration. Thus a domain registered on 07 April 2006 will have been renewed on 30 April 2007.
EURid was sued by the Ovidio syndicate and lost for breaking their own regulations. The predominance of cybersquatting and warehousing in the .eu has reduced the extension to a laughing stock. Perhaps the fools in EURid and the European Commission think they have done a good job. However the reality is that they have betrayed the citizens of the EU, its businesses and intellectual property rights holders. EURid had, according to EU regulations, the ability to stop the phantom registrars. However massive incompetence and lack of a clue in EURid management meant that they did nothing. Absolutely nothing! This was despite being alerted to the problem prior to the landrush.
To most of us in the EU, the European Union and its "government" epitomises waste, fraud and corruption. Now it has an incompetently run, irrelevant ccTLD to match. The people are sticking with their ccTLDs and with the other TLDs. The only question now is how low .eu can go.
[...] Exodus: 8% of .EU Domains Drop Some of our readers believe this is a good sign (the exodus could have been much worse), others blame speculators and bureaucratic management for .EU's massive failure to win the hearts, minds and actual websites of Europeans. [...]
While I agree with alot of points John has made above, as he knows what he`s talking about if you do the rounds of the forums. Alot of the dump at present is users who have registered completely naff domain names. (My opinion if wrong forward me a list) When I go into certain forums and see some of the .eu domains names for sale I have to laugh. Why would you register that I think? Registering names for registering names sake.
My main criteria with registering names is firstly what sort of business I can run from that domain name not xyc 3 digit domain is free, its useless to me but might fetch a price because it has 3 digits. I have registered over 80 .EU domains, sites coming soon. A hacker took 1 of my sites under construction down the other day.
Some of Europe`s strong extensions such as .de have taken over 10 years to get in that position. So I dont agree the future`s bleak for the extension but I do agree with 2 points I have seen John above make and that is that the EURID need to be sacked we need a company in there a profit making company to drive the marketing of which the EURID did little or none. The extension needs to be rebranded for Europe and not the European Union, heck its like some sort of segregation, if you meet somebody and they say there from europe you dont ask is that europe or the european union. Idiology is a wonderful thing, these guys with all there rights of people are creating barriers.
Anyways getting back to the actual extension, what it needs now is some high profile brandable sites, to do the eurid marketing job for them, give me time lol.
If the EURID would like too forward me say a 100k marketing grant, I will show them how its done. Till then slowly but surely building the .eu extension, if the hackers leave me alone, the funny thing is a turkish hacker went after one of my sites successfully, wondering was it politically motivated, anyways I wont hold it against him, he maybe european unionist too 1 day, joke. Your just helping me improve my security.
From a domainers point of view, I would say it`s a volatile market.
Just one more thing about the EURID, who in there right minds said yes, belgians and italians are best qualified to run anything.
I believe one day .eu will be more popular for Euopeens then .com, just plain logic. Most of the .com d'ont give service to Europeens and .eu is so specific in the area.
That is not a bad rate, and .EU domains are good for geo targeting. The reason that .UK domains have such a bad renewal rate is because they are one of the most expensive domains you can buy.
I need of tools or web sites with dropped dot eu domains ? Please help me