French registrations of .EU domains show a clear rejection of the name by the French. After 24 hours, the French have only registered one fifth the number of domains (48,000) that the British have registered (260,000) – even though proportionately the countries are virtually the same size. But French registrations at are also significantly behind Germany (370,000), Italy (78,000), the Netherlands (145,000), Sweden (60,000) and registrations from Cyprus (73,000).
In the first day of trading in .Eu domain names, over 1.2 million active names were registered through the 1,000 accredited registrars according to EURid live statistics.
The UK lead in the first four hours – says EURid – however Germany soon overtook the UK.
Marc van Wesemael, Managing Director of EURid has expressed satisfaction at the progress saying, “We are satisfied to see that the interest in .eu has been so large and that many already regard .eu as a useful complement to Internet’s national top level domain names”.
Could President Chirac have had some influence over this? Will the French catch up later? We’re taking no bets.
Andy Atkins-Kruger
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Interesting, didn’t the French also reject the European Union constitution. Maybe they don’t want to be associated with the .eu domain name either. My bet is the French will never catch up. On the other hand it appears the Cypriots sure understand the value. Maybe it’s the Turks in Cyprus and they’re looking forwarding to joining the European Union.