Since the launch of the new and improved (or in more practical terms, cheaper and more accessible) .es domains, Red.es is happy to report that the number of registrations for .es domains in June was twice as much as in the previous month, reaching 3,348 registrations on June 30th and adding up to a total of 94,744 domains with the local .es extension.
Red.es is committed to doubling the number within a year, to help bring Spain close to its European counterparts who are leading the way.
This increase is due to an important decision to make the local .es domain name registration much more accessible, by decreasing the bureaucratic obstacles as well as the exaggerated prices (now decreased by 71%). Currently, while in the first phase of the improved registration process, the simplified .es registration is available to official organizations and government agencies.
While the .eu domain registration is going to be put into action starting October, there is still the issue of what to do about special characters (ñ, ü, etc.) which are currently not recognized by most browsers. The EURid, the non-profit organization in charge of the .eu domain, will have plenty on their hands to make sure that the future .eu domain will indeed reflect the multilingual makeup of the European Union.
The .biz and .info domains are already being tested to support multilingual domains, but for now, just for the German speaking market. The EURid are in a rush to deal with the issue quite yet. The official launch is in October is limited and until the start of the unlimited registration in February 2006, special characters are not a priority. According to Javier Saenz, Director of Arsys, a private domain name registration company, “I don’t think in 2006.” Time will tell, but it is definitely an issue to be taken seriously; now that so many local and segmented domains are made available, they might be truly local.
Sources:
Marina Zaliznyak
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