.EU wot m8? Brexit smacks fresh registrations of bloc's top-level domain EURid, registry manager of the .eu top-level domain, has reported a plunge of just over 130,000 registrations for 2018. "Compared to 2017, the total net registrations decreased by 130,305 (from 3,815,055 to 3,684,750)," the firm said in its annual report (PDF), bucking a trend of 2.2 per cent year-on-year growth over the past …
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I've just started seeing .eu domains for the first time, in the form of spam emails with .eu originating addresses. I can't recall ever seeing a single legitimate email or a single web site outside of the .eu government using a .eu name. The entire .eu registry and domain name system could disappear down a black hole and very few people in the rest of the world would even notice (although going by current experience it seems to make a good indicator of spam for my email filters).
Who is actually using these names, and for what purpose? Are they just a form of brand localisation for marketing purposes?
I've seen quite a few non-haulage related businesses use the.eu domain but I haven't seen any SPAM from .eu domains... yet. I suppose SPAM is a universal problem.
On the other hand I can sympathise with the feeling that there are so many domains today that it's becoming ridiculous.
It’s a mandated requirement for EU organisations and I would suggest a vanity domain for other businesses (ie. it redirects to a companies main website).
I’m sure some of the customers feel it is worthwhile - It seems to be a fairly costly way of running a domain registry compared to the alternatives for little real added value.
YMMV
I have three [legitimate] clients with .eu addresses. All obtained for good reasons. One has suddenly discovered a convenient Romanian address belonging to a relative one of the directors. The two have their heads deeply ingrained in the sand and I have given up on advising them what to do. 'Cos I no longer have a clue (like EURID).
It's not business breaking but just a part of a larger area of uncertainty that is breaking business. Whether you are for or against Brexit the conduct of this government is beyond scandalous and incompetent. I still expect most of the most guilty will be funding their pensions from memoirs on how they made Britain great again (if only the other lot hadn't screwed it up).
Me? I'm into Baked Bean futures. You will either will make a fortune if catastrophy strikes or you will have a meal for life. Two way win in my book ;-)
Who is actually using these names, and for what purpose?
We do use a .eu domain, which was initially registered as a protection for the name, solely as a convenience for things we want to keep off our main .com domain such as emails that bypass the spam protection and Exchange. It's not publicised in any way and if we lose it I'll just use another domain instead.
I interact with legitimate .eu websites from time to time, but I'm in Germany now and they are quite common here. As far as the Germans are concerned it's just another tld, just like some British sites go for .com and some for .co.uk - depending on whether the name they want is already taken.
Who is actually using these names, and for what purpose?
I have <myname>.eu as my personal domain, mostly for email. I registered it because <myname> was already taken in all the other TLDs that I might have considered, and I'm quite happy to be regarded as a citizen of the EU.
The main use is to identify who is selling my details - for example, if I start to receive spam addressed to elreg@<myname>.eu, I'll know exactly where to point the finger.
Should the suicidally destructive nonsense that is Brexit ever comes to pass, I have access to a number of non-UK EU postal addresses that I could use for registration.
Something I've wondered idly about, particularly as .eu is reported to be weeding out "fraudulent" registrations - in the event that Brexit occurs on hard terms, you say that you "have access to a number of non-UK EU postal addresses" but if you don't live at that address or do business there, would that perhaps be judged as a fraudulent registration of the domain name by you?
I suspect - but I may be wrong - that this time, having an Irish grandfather (and registering from his sheltered accommodation) - for instance - won't be sufficient.
I see a whole bunch of online stores use them, mostly ones that used to be a single-country exclusive then started selling in 3-4 neighbouring ones (possibly following the recent-ish expansion of the single courier service they used into multiple countries, which made that a literally zero-effort proposition), and now they're a sort of regional / quasi-pan-EU thing...
It is a blended renewal rate that combines the renewal rates for the first year renewals and renewals from previous years. It can be misleading as the real indicator of a TLD's health is in the first year renewals. Some of the heavily discounted new gTLDs have renewal rates of around 1%. For ccTLDs, and .COM, the blended renewal rates tend to be quite strong at around 72%. For .COM, the one year renewal rates are around 57%. This is, in part, down to discounting as discounted registrations do not renew as well as full priced registrations.
Most of the registrations in .EU ccTLD are brand protection registrations and are not used for active websites. As a class, this kind of domain name renews well and will generally keep being renewed until the business either folds or gets bored with the ccTLD. The big problem with the .EU ccTLD is that the European Commission and the its advisors are utterly clueless about the domain name business as can be seen from the dog's dinner it made of the launch of the ccTLD and this in-again out-again uncertainty about UK registrations. The .EU is not really used for primary websites. People just use the local ccTLD (.UK etc) or .COM for their primary brand websites. The main use of the .EU ccTLD is for a kind of truck stop TLD where users go before being directed to the relevant ccTLD or .COM website based on their IP address.
Losing 10% of a ccTLD in one go is not a good thing. The .EU ccTLD was completely banjaxed when the European Commission, its advisors made a mess of it at the launch. Most of the registrations were from outside the EU and used front companies. It killed the English language registrations market in the ccTLD and it was responsible for kickstarting growth in most of the EU's ccTLDs. Had it been properly specified with sensible regulations, it would easily have been over 8 million registrations by now.
Impressive.
Also, mindbogglingly irrelevant.
Do you remember what actually happened to the Soviet Union? It disappeared. That's right, it just, poof, disappeared. That's why it's not on the maps anymore.
It seems likely that's also why it's not setting rules for the .su TLD anymore. Russia does, and Russia decided not only to keep it, but develop it. It's not "grandfathered" in the way you imply.
The EU is doing well, not disappearing, and keeps making decisions for its TLD. That you don't like them is sad, but ultimately, it's your problem that you want them to follow the Soviet Union, and they don't.
@werdsmith
"Errm doing well? Not according to a bloke down the pub, he says its about to collapse."
I can imagine Junker in the pub and looking tatty but wearing trackies? But yes Junker has got his excuses in for the collapse of the EU, Some other president said brexit was the end of western civilisation so that could be taken either way. The creator (or one?) of the Euro doesnt expect it to survive based on its implementation. And thats before we start comparing EU actions against actual economics (where the EU doesnt throw out the book. They read it and do the exact opposite).
"And he was wearing tatty grey-sweat trackie bottoms so he should know."
Thanks for the clarification, have an upvote for it.
I'd update it to "It's still doing rather better now than the Soviet Union at the time it got its .su"
Not seeing .eu spam just now but TLD .icq that represents a misspelled. "I Seek You" from old radio jargon is spewing tons. Apparently the registrar wants an abuse form for each one of the 100s of sending domains. It's a snowshoe operation pimping the typical junk facilitated by the usual masking agents of Cloudflare and a domain register that can't find the common end point in the 100s of their own domain names. Typically malware/phishing slips out every under the cover of a 100 or so semi-legit looking emails.
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