The much awaited .eu will be launching very soon with Sunrise 1 taking place during the month of December.
In common with the launch of other TLDs, the launch of .eu is being done in phases:
- Sunrise 1 - trademark holders
- Sunrise 2 - Prior rights - business names / company names etc
- Landrush - everything else
There is quite a bit of hype surrounding the entire thing, but there was plenty of hype with the .info launch also and that has proved to be a damp squid.
If you are a trademark holder or wish to protect your brand's identity then the .eu launch is important. It's a lot cheaper to get your domain name now than have to litigate later, although Eurid have some procedures in place to help mitigate the possible problems with cybersquatting.
Of course the big question is whether or not .eu will take off.
I'm not 100% sure. It does open up certain channels that other TLDs do not offer - .eu is a regional TLD, which gives it a certain value that a gTLD or ccTLD currently does not offer.
Will that work in the market?
Will people react to it and understand what it represents?
That is hard to say.
Many small businesses still do not really understand the difference between a ccTLD and a gTLD. For many there can be only one domain extension - .com - everything else is just background noise.
If you're involved in the domain / hosting business this kind of attitude is more than a little frustrating at times. It is perfectly understandable of course, but you'd really like to have clients who knew how important protecting their identity was, instead of coming to you later, when "their" name has been taken asking you how they can "fix" it.
Enough of the day dreaming, however.
In the Irish market there are two companies (or three if you ignore that one is simply a new face of an existing one) that are fully accredited Eurid registrars. Eurid had originally confused the market by stating that there could be no reselling of .eu domains, however this has since been clarified, so companies, such as
mine, are now in a position to register .eu on behalf of our clientele.
Oddly enough the pre-launch of .eu coincides with our signing of an agreement with Ascio to handle a very wide choice of ccTLDs, so not only are we taking orders for .eu, but also .se, .nl,.be etc. etc
