Apr 7, 2006
.eu domains open to everyone
European net domain opens to all at BBC News – Technology
After a four month reserve period to allow trademark holders to register their names, the .eu top level domain is finally available to ordinary people and businesses. Registrations are still restricted to EU residents and businesses with offices in the European Community however, in a similar way to other country/region-specific domains such as .ca.
I think Markus Eggensperger, Lycos legal and PR director for domains and quoted on the BBC web site, is being a bit optimistic though. At one point he talks about .eu eventually challenging .com in importance, which I don’t think is likely to happen, certainly not in the next few years. I also expect that most of the interest in the .eu top level domain is split between existing companies wanting to ensure that they have their name in every possible TLD (and to stop anyone else from registering it) and lots of speculative applications for domains such as sex.eu.
Side note: The BBC article also refers to domains such as www.polo.eu being registered, which is incorrect as the actual registration would be for polo.eu. Hopefully they’ll fix this error, although I am somewhat disappointed that it managed to make its way past whoever was proof-reading the story.
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