Is EU Domain a Failure

[anurag]

EU Domain a Failure

I was reading some article and just wanted to know that is it worth registering EU or it is a failure

Vote for this and let users decide it.

 

[jmcc]

The .eu is completely discredited as a trustworthy extension for business in the Ireland and the UK. Both these countries had over 78% failure rate on company name applications during Sunrise 2 due to the bozos in PwC BE. The .eu extension is a non-entity in the minds of the public. The awareness that it even exists is minimal. In the EU - the old cctld/com order stands. But then that's what you get when you allow a bunch of incompetent jerks to run a registry for an extension that was dreamt up by a bunch of clueless morons.

Below are the figures for the top ten .eu hosters as of 01/October/2006 based on 81.57% of .eu indexed. The term BIONIC refers to Biz/Info/Org/Net/Ie/Com.

Hoster BIONIC — .eu — Country

1. 1UND1.DE 345874 — 109834 — DE
2. UDAGDNS.NET 244866 — 105153 — DE
3. RZONE.DE 158584 — 78161 — DE
4. OVIDIOLIMITED.COM 0 — 62836 — CY
5. SEDOPARKING.COM 832876 — 55193 — US
6. XSS.RO 27 — 43371 — RO
7. FABULOUS.COM 811759 — 42108 — AU
8. TECHNORAIL.COM 226748 — 39706 — IT
9. BLIXEM.NL 34 — 38276 — NL
10. SECURESERVER.NET 8321657 — 28265 — US

Source: http://blog.whoisireland.com/2006/10/13/top-10-eu-hosters-october-2006/

The top ten contains Ovidio, Sedoparking.com, Fabulous.com, Blixem.nl (& trademarks etc), Xss.ro (Romanian hosted squatter/warehousing network (UK front company)) - all parking/monetization/squatting/direct navigation hosters. That level of concentration is one seriously sick TLD ecology. Normally there is some element of direct navigation and parking in any TLD but the extent of the problem in .eu points to it being seriously fscked.

I have a spidering run for a .eu search engine scheduled. It should show the level of web activity in .eu ccTLD. Though given preliminary work, most of it may be parked or "coming soon".

Regards...jmcc

 

[MadAboutDomains]

The .EU has a been a failure to date, but you never know what the future holds. With the Ovidio "scandal" and other issues, there doesn't seem to be a lot of confidence in the ability of the .EU governing body.

Personally, I think the .EU is junk. People in the EU see themselves as citizens of the respective countries they live in and at the end of the day, a guy in Britain doesn't really care more about some other guy in France, because they are now collectively apart of the EU. If they created a .UN extension, would Americans adopt this as the next greatest thing, because we're a part of the UN? No... We couldn't care less about the UN, because it's just some government agency that has no real bearing on our lives. It's the same with the EU. Maybe theres a small segment of businesses that want to operate in the EU and thus may find it attractive, but they'd be much better off with a .com, because if they are at a level to conduct business in an "international" capacity, then limiting their operations to the EU would just be ridiculous when theres a global market...

Personally I think the .EU extension was just some carried over hype from the formation of the EU, but after everything settles down, people will find that it really can't stand on it's own merit.

Thats my opinion anyway.

What EU culture has to do with whether .EU is a failure or not, i shall NEVER know.

The .eu is completely discredited as a trustworthy extension for business in the Ireland and the UK. Both these countries had over 78% failure rate on company name applications during Sunrise 2 due to the bozos in PwC BE. The .eu extension is a non-entity in the minds of the public. The awareness that it even exists is minimal. In the EU - the old cctld/com order stands. But then that's what you get when you allow a bunch of incompetent jerks to run a registry for an extension that was dreamt up by a bunch of clueless morons.

Below are the figures for the top ten .eu hosters as of 01/October/2006 based on 81.57% of .eu indexed. The term BIONIC refers to Biz/Info/Org/Net/Ie/Com.

Hoster BIONIC — .eu — Country

1. 1UND1.DE 345874 — 109834 — DE
2. UDAGDNS.NET 244866 — 105153 — DE
3. RZONE.DE 158584 — 78161 — DE
4. OVIDIOLIMITED.COM 0 — 62836 — CY
5. SEDOPARKING.COM 832876 — 55193 — US
6. XSS.RO 27 — 43371 — RO
7. FABULOUS.COM 811759 — 42108 — AU
8. TECHNORAIL.COM 226748 — 39706 — IT
9. BLIXEM.NL 34 — 38276 — NL
10. SECURESERVER.NET 8321657 — 28265 — US

Source: http://blog.whoisireland.com/2006/10/13/top-10-eu-hosters-october-2006/

The top ten contains Ovidio, Sedoparking.com, Fabulous.com, Blixem.nl (& trademarks etc), Xss.ro (Romanian hosted squatter/warehousing network (UK front company)) - all parking/monetization/squatting/direct navigation hosters. That level of concentration is one seriously sick TLD ecology. Normally there is some element of direct navigation and parking in any TLD but the extent of the problem in .eu points to it being seriously fscked.

I have a spidering run for a .eu search engine scheduled. It should show the level of web activity in .eu ccTLD. Though given preliminary work, most of it may be parked or "coming soon".

Regards...jmcc

This is the case for all other domain extensions. Parking services are most common 'hosters'. Why would normal hosts be at the top of any 'top hosters' for a domain extension?

- There are millions of normal hosts with limited users
- And Limited amounts of parking companies with millions of parked domains.

This also has no grasp on how successful/unsuccessful .EU is. Ridiculous.

There are more parked domains, than developed domains on the web, thats the way it is for any extension.

 

[vitalir]

5 months after .eu birth:

Hotels.eu €257,000
Shopping.eu €153,500
OnlineCasino.eu €36,500
InternetCasinos.eu €7,500
€160,000 bid for advertising.eu

all of these show it is a complete failure

 

[MadAboutDomains]

5 months after landrush:

Hotels.eu €257,000
Shopping.eu €153,500
OnlineCasino.eu €36,500
InternetCasinos.eu €7,500
€160,000 bid for advertising.eu

all of these show it is a complete failure

EinFamilienHaus.eu - $14,219
IQ-TEST.eu - $6,725
Suchmaschinen-marketing.eu - $2,562
AmericanTourister.eu - $2,562

 

[jmcc]

This is the case for all other domain extensions. Parking services are most common 'hosters'. Why would normal hosts be at the top of any 'top hosters' for a domain extension?

Because the normal hosters are among the top hosters for an average TLD. The fact is that the concentration of squatters/parking/direct navigation in the top .eu hosters makes it different from any normal, healthy TLD.

There are millions of normal hosts with limited users

I've been covering domain stats since 2000 and I have hoster stats going back to 2000. The vast majority of hosters in .com for example have less than 100 .com domains hosted (approx 629408 hosters).

This also has no grasp on how successful/unsuccessful .EU is.

Well it is based on the evidence. Your opinion is based on what - pure domain sales? A successful TLD should at least be used. If the majority of domains are warehoused/parked, then that acts against the TLD being accepted as a credible TLD. People begin to regard it as a backwater extension like .info or .biz and pretty soon everything resumes the status quo of the com/ccTLD hierarchy.

There are more parked domains, than developed domains on the web, thats the way it is for any extension.

For many ccTLDs, that pattern would be reversed. The appearance of authority websites and and pureplay websites is a sign that a TLD is being taken seriously - people being willing to invest money developing sites for it. But this kind of settler/pioneer activity in a new TLD is absent in .eu ccTLD.

Regards...jmcc

5 months after .eu birth:

Hotels.eu €257,000
Shopping.eu €153,500
OnlineCasino.eu €36,500
InternetCasinos.eu €7,500
€160,000 bid for advertising.eu

all of these show it is a complete failure

Forgive me if I seem cynical, but how many of these were genuine sales? Provable sales where money changed hands and domains moved between separately owned companies? Every new TLD has some highlight domain sales but the vast majority of domains rarely sell for little more than the reg fee.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Jo]

I think it's too soon to say for sure so I voted not too bad. I wouldn't put it in the same context as .name as .eu is for europe and so a country code extension. And it's such a young extension...wait until after the names that are already regged drop and then we'll see.

 

[jmcc]

I think it's too soon to say for sure so I voted not too bad. I wouldn't put it in the same context as .name as .eu is for europe and so a country code extension. And it's such a young extension...wait until after the names that are already regged drop and then we'll see.

I agree with some of this. The big crunch for .eu will come when the domains are up for renewal next year. It would not be unthinkable to see .eu collapse to a core of about 900K domains. But .eu is not for Europe. It is for the European Union. It excludes Switzerland, Iceland and a few other European countries. But as a ccTLD it is a disaster. Europe has two of the largest ccTLDs in the world: .de (around 11 Million doms) and .uk (around 5 million doms). The .eu landrush artificially inflated the .eu domain count. I think that some are interpreting this inflated domain count as proof that .eu is a success. But the reality is that it is a classic boom and bust pattern and all new TLDs experience it.

Regards...jmcc

 

[MadAboutDomains]

In response:

This is the case for all other domain extensions. Parking services are most common 'hosters'. Why would normal hosts be at the top of any 'top hosters' for a domain extension?

Because the normal hosters are among the top hosters for an average TLD. The fact is that the concentration of squatters/parking/direct navigation in the top .eu hosters makes it different from any normal, healthy TLD.

There are millions of normal hosts with limited users

I've been covering domain stats since 2000 and I have hoster stats going back to 2000. The vast majority of hosters in .com for example have less than 100 .com domains hosted (approx 629408 hosters).

So you are proving what I said?

Parking services naturally are at the top for the AMOUNT of domains they serve content to, because they have more than all of the different hosts individually. Meaning that the stats showing that the parking services are at the top are of no substance to the issue in hand.

If ONE INDIVIDUAL parking service has 10,000 domains hosted and a host has 100 names... who's going to appear at the top??? The parking service! Not the little hosts.

This also has no grasp on how successful/unsuccessful .EU is.

Well it is based on the evidence. Your opinion is based on what - pure domain sales? A successful TLD should at least be used. If the majority of domains are warehoused/parked, then that acts against the TLD being accepted as a credible TLD. People begin to regard it as a backwater extension like .info or .biz and pretty soon everything resumes the status quo of the com/ccTLD hierarchy.

Please show me the evidence which shows there is a bigger percentage of parked domains than there are for the other major extensions that are so called 'not failures'.

My opinion is not based purely on domain sales, that was mentioned only at the end, if you look further up the topic I posted a link to a comment I made on a .ASIA post, which shows why the new extension would be in the same position as .EU or any other extension.

There are more parked domains, than developed domains on the web, thats the way it is for any extension.

For many ccTLDs, that pattern would be reversed. The appearance of authority websites and and pureplay websites is a sign that a TLD is being taken seriously - people being willing to invest money developing sites for it. But this kind of settler/pioneer activity in a new TLD is absent in .eu ccTLD.

Regards...jmcc

5 months after .eu birth:

Hotels.eu €257,000
Shopping.eu €153,500
OnlineCasino.eu €36,500
InternetCasinos.eu €7,500
€160,000 bid for advertising.eu

all of these show it is a complete failure

Forgive me if I seem cynical, but how many of these were genuine sales? Provable sales where money changed hands and domains moved between separately owned companies? Every new TLD has some highlight domain sales but the vast majority of domains rarely sell for little more than the reg fee.

Regards...jmcc

I think we need to have some evidence that there is a considerably larger percentage of domains being parked on .EU as oppose to the other popular extensions com, net, org, info, biz, us.

I highly suspect that the pattern will be pretty much the same. On every extension there are high volumes of spectators with hundreds of domains which they hold and park.

I understand that alot of parked domains and not alot of developed domains makes a unhealthy domain extension. I think we need to get fully in to perspective as to what we mean when a domain extension is a failure or a success.

I am an open minded guy and would like to get to the bottom of this once and for all.

 

[Binfus]

A successful TLD should at least be used. If the majority of domains are warehoused/parked, then that acts against the TLD being accepted as a credible TLD. People begin to regard it as a backwater extension like .info or .biz and pretty soon everything resumes the status quo of the com/ccTLD hierarchy........
Regards...jmcc

IMO, anyone who tends to label .info (along with .biz) as a "backwater" extension needs to inform himself better about the relative health and well-being of various new extensions.

 

[jmcc]

In response:
I think we need to have some evidence that there is a considerably larger percentage of domains being parked on .EU as oppose to the other popular extensions com, net, org, info, biz, us.

I highly suspect that the pattern will be pretty much the same.

I'm working on the evidence on the numbers of parked domains but it does take time. Until the search engine run is completed, I have to go on IP identification and the number of parking site IPs in the counts is high (out of the total initial run, 441488 sites are concentrated on just 15 IPs.). That kind of concentration does not bode well for .eu ccTLD.

It is just that the whole millions of hosters with limited numbers of hosted domains does not reflect the reality of many TLDs. Most TLDs are dominated by super hosters

Well the millions of hosts with a limited amount of domains tends to ignore the fact that many of these hosters are one hit wonders - a single domain hosted on shared hosting on an aliased nameserver. To put the .eu into context, the rough breakdown on hosters is below:

1-99 domains - hosters: 35491 - total: 199695
100-999 domains - hosters: 851 - total: 254815
1000-9999 domains - hosters: 176 - total: 503629
10000-99999 domains - hosters: 21 - total: 574600
>100000 domains - hosters: 2 - total: 214987

Regards...jmcc

IMO, anyone who tends to label .info (along with .biz) as a "backwater" extension needs to inform himself better about the relative health and well-being of various new extensions.

Binfus - that is the way people think. They don't consider .info or .biz first. When they think of websites they tend to think of .com or ccTLD instinctively. Even though those TLDs are growing, they are not immediately thought of by the public. The .com gTLD has a historical legacy and position that .info and .biz can never hope to equal. The ccTLDs also have more recognition than .info or .biz. That is reality. Perhaps my using the term "backwater" may appear offensive but it is a good description of the way that anything outside of .com and ccTLDs do not immediately loom large in the public perception.

Regards...jmcc

 

[MadAboutDomains]

1-99 domains - hosters: 35491 - total: 199695
100-999 domains - hosters: 851 - total: 254815
1000-9999 domains - hosters: 176 - total: 503629
10000-99999 domains - hosters: 21 - total: 574600
>100000 domains - hosters: 2 - total: 214987

Assuming that those with 1-9999 domains are realistically going to be a mixture of parkers and normal hosters and Assuming that those highlighted in red are definitely Parking services, do you feel that this is an unhealthy amount of parkers? In in opinion it does not seem grounds for 'failure' status.

I still stick by my word, that it will be much the same picture for the other major TLD extensions.

 

[jmcc]

Assuming that those with 1-9999 domains are realistically going to be a mixture of parkers and normal hosters and Assuming that those highlighted in red are definitely Parking services, do you feel that this is an unhealthy amount of parkers? In in opinion it does not seem grounds for 'failure' status.

You are mixing up the numbers of domains hosted versus parked/coming soon websites. The fact that so many out of the top ten hosters (5 of them) are parking operations or warehousers makes it unhealthy. There will be a lot more parking but that can only be fully established when the spidering run is finished and the active .eu sites, redirects and parked domain counts are known.

Apart from the high number of parked domains, the other main indicator of the health of the TLD is the number of active websites (rather than forwarding sites) that exist. Much of the activity, outside of parking/monetization, in .eu is down to protective registrations. Typically these domains are point to the primary website or are not even set up with a website at all. The initial evidence, based on IP groupings, does seem to indicate that most of .eu is parked/coming soon. The spidering run will show if that is the case.

The ones you highlighted in red are a combination of parking hosters and real ISPs/hosters. EURid made such a mess of the ccTLD that it is not a trustworthy extension for businesses. That is what makes it a failure - plain and simple EU incompetence. I don't expect to find as many pureplay sites (sites using .eu as their primary identity) in this spidering run as I would do for .co.uk or .com.

Regards...jmcc

 

[MadAboutDomains]

Well, it is currently too early to tell how things will pan out. Maybe parking is the criteria for a successful domain extension in todays domain society.

Let's be honest, most domains currently owned are parked.

 

[loscocco]

i think its a big flop and a lot of other people i have talked to from Europe hae said the same thing.

 

[binaryman]

I have some very nice .eu domains for sale here on Namepro's at Euro 10 each and nobody wants them. I think even if I gave them away for nothing nobody would want them. So...maybe that gives you an idea of just how popular they are. I think the .Mobi names are heading the same way.

 

[domaindigger]

It will take time for .EU's to become valuable. As with anything, the greater the demand and the lesser the supply, the higher the price. Demand is only going to grow and supply is only going to diminish. That means the price will only go in one direction. The question is, at what rate will it increase?

I would hold on to any .EU's for 5 years and then see...

 

[Damion]

That is not really a good indicator Fred.

Six months have passed and that is not an big enough time frame to conclude it's a failure, it's that simple in my opinion.
I'm wondering what will be said in 6 months about the .mobi extension.

 

[jmcc]

I have some very nice .eu domains for sale here on Namepro's at Euro 10 each and nobody wants them. I think even if I gave them away for nothing nobody would want them. So...maybe that gives you an idea of just how popular they are. I think the .Mobi names are heading the same way.

On the upside, that could be just typical post-Landrush behaviour. The buzz is gone out of .eu and the necessary development to make it a credible TLD has not happened yet. I'm not sure about .mobi as it was far better handled by the registry and much of the Landrush mania that we saw with .eu has not really happened. This gives .mobi a chance to grow more naturally as a TLD where as .eu's pattern is a classic boom and bust one. (.info and .biz were the same as .eu but on a smaller scale as the domainer industry wasn't quite as advanced at their launch times.)

Regards...jmcc

 

[Domainate.com]

I think for the time being, it's a success to few, failure to many. Shady "registrars" secured most of the best names and left the crap for everyone else. That said, some people have managed to get good sales of .eu names, and I think over time, it will work itself out. Hopefully ICANN will mandate some procedures to make sure .asia doesn't suffer the same landrush fate.

 

[bocanames]

The extension is good, the rollout, well thats a bit of a different story

agreed - good intrinsic value, disgraceful rollout