Hi Jon,

Quoting Jon Lawrence on Monday April 10, 2006:
| .de is the second biggest TLD in the world, .co.uk is the 4th and I think
| .nl is also in the top 10 so it's not surprising that these countries make
| up the most .eu registrants.

I for one am surprised there was such a strong correlation... UK is
notoriously un-Eurocentric compared to the rest of Europe, and it could
be argued those with the most domains saturation would have their community's
domain appetites sated more than other contries.

It would be fair to say .de has so many domains because the local ISPs
hand them out for free like candy, so the strong demand might be due to
increased awareness of domains, but I doubt due to some unmet pent up
demand.

| Clearly the secret to a succesful TLD launch is to announce it, then wait
| five years while the demand builds...

Lovely Brussels bureaucracy...

Kieren McCarthy's take on it is at
http://www.kierenmccarthy.co.uk/blog/_archives/2006/4/9/1873359.html,
but I fail to understand how he comes to the conclusion:

   "The huge registrations of the .eu domains say one thing very, very
   loudly in my view: ICANN - YOU DO NOT KNOW BEST WHEN IT COMES TO
   TOP-LEVEL DOMAINS!!!"

   "The new, shiny .eu domain - despite having come from the stultifying
   world of European bureaucracy - has demonstrated the world wants the
   Internet its way - and that is fast, flexible and open. Another new
   season of the Internet is upon us."

It is hard to reconcile how it is "fast, flexible and open" compared to
gTLDs when it takes years to deploy, requires arcane validation agencies
to vet applications, has huge reserved lists etc.etc. .info and .biz
had none of those and were relative flops. In addition, the claim that
"ICANN - YOU DO NOT KNOW BEST WHEN IT COMES TO TOP-LEVEL DOMAINS!!!" is
particularly ironic given .eu was approved by ICANN in the first place.

At the end of the day, .eu succeeds because it is a name people want, it
is that simple.

kim