.EU, considerations on their growth

[ilcesco]

I know many people is already pre-registering lots of .eu, and probably i'll try to pre-register some either before april, but at this moment i would try to think a bit about the future develpment of this tld market.

From my first point of view, i would say that probably all the "continental" TLDs ( .eu, .us, .cn, .in etc) are becoming more popular than others tlds such as .info or .biz, wich have been introduced years ago and still lacks in number of developed websites.
In my opinion continental tlds have a kind of geographical localization benefit, wich is more important for business. ( I mean, if somebody run a business in europe, i think a "mybusiness.eu" would be better then "mybusiness.biz")

On the other hand i'm a bit skeptic of people who are pre-registering hundreds of .eu, because i think that, unlike US, in europe the most used tlds are still the country codes ( .co.uk, .es, .it, .fr etc.) and i think this could affect a lot the future popularity of this new tld.

what do you think? Continental localization or big failure due to excess od ccTLDs?

 

[hostarz]

I just can't give my opinion coz i'm still new to domainers' world !!!!

why didn't anybody answer ?
where have all the "giants" gone ?
can't we take alittle of your time ???

 

[aznchong91]

I believe that .eu's market will grow, but it won't be as big as the other ones, .us for example. As you stated above, europeans tend to use their country codes. Nevertheless, if you can get really premium .eu's, like 3 letters, then sure, go and buy them!

 

[larryau]

I think the .eu market will definitely grow, as the EU has always pushed to make the ties between its member nations stronger, and many people have predicted that in 20 years time, we'll see the United Countries of Europe... And as aznchong91 said, 3 letter addresses are always highly priced, so my advice is to BUY BUY BUY!

 

[Sir Regalot]

Isn't .eu a little too similar to .edu.

http://www.educause.edu/edudomain/

.edu has a large number of websites.

Whoever gets "edu.eu" will be able to start a sub-domain. yourcollege.edu.eu.

I also noticed net.eu, org.eu and info.eu will also be available. But com.eu and biz.eu are reserved.

 

[Smith]

I know in France I see .fr's daily in advertisements outside, the very odd .com thats all.

If the rest of Europe is like what I see in France, I imagine .eu is going to have a hard time.

And hell, lets be honest about things here for a sec, speculators like us are going to kill the extension before it even has a chance to get off the ground.

Add in patriotism and the fact that ccTLD's are well established, and .eu looks like a big waste of $ in my eyes.

 

[mole]

.EU will be good for geotargeting purposes and represents a very interesting development proposition for developers, and the best ones will definitely have considerable value in the coming years. You can try your luck, there is nothing better than landrush to grab, but keep it to the best.

The only problem is, the best names seems to have been taken out by people with Bora Bora TMs, over 100,000 of them...

 

[ilcesco]

The only problem is, the best names seems to have been taken out by people with Bora Bora TMs, over 100,000 of them...

So true.. somebody should investigate...

 

[The-YoungLat]

do you guys truly thurst does .eu ... i can't get passad that one...lol :\....but i might reg a couple of them.

 

[gazzip]

So true.. somebody should investigate...

If I get some nice .eu's and sell for a good price I'll find out for you - I would love a good excuse to go back to Bora Bora ! It's luvely there

 

[Smith]

For the record, I am going to make some assumptions in this post based on my beliefs and experience. Some will be out there, some might be right, only time will tell really. Just take it as a little bit of outside perspective

---

There is also another problem with .eu, it is so vast that 100,000 while it sounds like a lot, is really basically nothing.

For example, here are 20 languages, guess what ones are "official languages of the .eu"

Spanish
Danish
German
Greek
English
French
Italian
Dutch
Portuguese
Finnish
Swedish
Czech
Estonian
Latvian
Lithuanian
Hungarian
Maltese
Polish
Slovak
Slovene


Have a number in mind?


Write it down . . .


The number of "official languages of the eu" (according to some site I googled ) is . . .


20

Thats right, all 20 languages listed above are official languages of the EU. So now keeping that in mind what I see happening is this.

Popular languages ie. English, German, Spanish etc, will be speculated to death from the moment the registry opens to the public by everyone who thinks that "their language" will be a winner.

What will happen is that people who would have bought these names and developed them and actually made the .eu something that people would type into the browser as a search mechanism will not get the names they wanted. Because there will be a lack of developed sites on the .eu chances are within the countries that the .eu will be heavily speculated on ie. Germany, France, England, Spain, etc. the local country codes will be more embraced because of the base of developed sites on these extensions that will add more credibility.

Will people develop sites on .eu in the heavily speculated languages? Of course, but it will be like .info, I spend all day online, I work on my computer and surf a lot, I can not tell you the name of a single developed .info. Granted, I am not in the business of selling or buying .infos so I haven't researched it, but as a general surfer who is more aware of domains than the average surfer I still have yet to even notice a .info, I've seen more .pk's than .infos. (I look forward to the games that are sure to come about with people heavily vested in .eu's freaking out when someone makes a post like that) Awww hell, I'm looking forward to the .info players on this board to respond to this comment

Where I do see this being a winning extension is in countries that are maybe a little underdeveloped so to say, and I see it being a popular extension ironically in countries outside of the .eu ie. _\|/_

Ultimately, I see too much going against the .eu to make it a winner on any serious scale, but that is not to say that there will not be large sales of domains in this market. There are 25 member states, and because of the pure scale of this extension I think it will grow fast, but I do see it being a failure at the end of the day.

The one glimmer of hope I potentially see for the .eu is because of the scale of speculation I anticipate, and the probability that the majority of the pages will be going to PPC landing pages, it is possible that .eu *might* become a commercial search engine of sorts. People could type in names *because* they think they will reach a commercial portal page targeted to the domain name. Now this is a complete long shot, but who knows

Anyway, thats all I can bring myself to post at the moment on this topic, hope you've enjoyed reading it.

 

[mole]

Great comments, smith. I nonetheless see you forget that local search is getting increasingly important, not just with developers but with search engines like Google (which Matt Cut of Google admitted) whose algos identify and qualify extensions as a key indicator of local relevance.

The Internet is a huge place, infinitely expandable, and like in space, being lost is a very real possibility. .COM was good at the first innings of the Internet since the world knew bugger all about this online space.

The Internet needs new signposts, the search engines need new clues into this bottomless pit.

The .EU extension was 6 years in the making, covering over 20 nations. Now imagine what you, as a developer, will need to address Europe, 20 cctlds?

Unfortunately, domain speculation has reached an all time high in terms of both financial muscle and sophistication. What will bring the namespace down will be that the best names will be hoarded away and held hostage from natural development, just like .INFO and .BIZ four years ago, and not that the extension has failed.

In the landrushes to come from now on, the elephants will lay the terrain bare.. what struggles up as little shoots despite all this trampling, will be the developers, god have mercy on them.

 

[Smith]

I'm very aware of local search, however I can't see the justification of a new domain extension biased solely on it.

Also, in my opinion ccTLD's lend themselves to local search over .eu's.

Thats why ccTLD's like .ca are gaining in popularity, .com is widely viewed as being an American extension, if I want to look for cars in Canada, I'm going to type in cars.ca over cars.com. If there were to be a North American extension ie .na .ca would still be preferential for Canadians and .com for Americans. (and no I'm not forgetting about .us) The .ca qualifier is ultimately a form of local search.

 

[mole]

I'm very aware of local search, however I can't see the justification of a new domain extension biased solely on it.

Least I preach to the priest, the .EU domain was not created for Google, but to represent the economic unification of a continent buffeted by the hurricanes of change from North and South America on the left and Asia on the right. As I said, developers now have a URL to address a continent instead of 20.

The Internet, by nature, cares little about boarders. At least now, you don't have to force US-centric .COM models down the throats of the French or Germans. There is a little bit more empathy in .EU addressing. The Europeans are a proud culture, deservedly so. .EU is that compromise to one bag fits all .COM, imho.

 

[Smith]

I totally agree with you regarding the issues of the internet being borderless, but I think peoples mindsets are still confined somewhat. There is also pride within Europeans for being European (My perspective anyway being a CDN in Europe). But before anyone will identify themselves as being European, they will identify themselves as being from a particular country, or in the case of a number of immigrants I've spoken to, as part of the country they reside in.

I could be totally wrong on all of this, but this thread represents what I've seen and what I know. Country codes in general are rocking right now, there is traffic, and big sales, it's just done quietly. Could it change on the release of the .eu? you bet. Will it? I doubt it, especially short - mid term.

.eu would have been successful and a major challenge to .com if it had been created and released to the public prior to the release of dozens of European country codes that are now well established.

 

[Zeeble]

What you need to remember is that the CCTLD's are very popular ATM. However, already everyone within the EU is actually an EU citizen. A federal system is already favoured within the EU and I can see this leading to a system more similar to that of the USA over the next 5-10 years. There is therefore huge potential for this extension although I do believe that CCTLD's for countries within the EU will never die out.