.eu domains, your opinions?

[Kudos Veteran]

Like many other people, i was drawn in by the .eu landrush.

The 2 notable domains i picked up were http://cremin.eu (my family name) and http://wehaveit.eu (potential to be an ebusiness name i reckon). So i'm just wondering what the general perception of .eus is around here? Particularly for wehaveit, i don't mind a lack of prestige for cremin.

If anyone else has bought them post them here too, i'd be interested to see if anyone got any bargains.

/k

edit:// Also, i currently run http://joncremin.com as my personal site, do you think cremin.eu is better?

[Kudos Veteran]

em..... bump?

[Avalanche]

You won on the .eu lottery ?

[James B]

I'm not so sure. Reading what many have said about all those domains being bought, I'm a bit wary of how much credibility the extension will have. Of the dozen or so I've tried to register or check for availability they're all taken - and although they have DNS info, none of them go anywhere.

Looking them up on a Whois you get a company - Google the company who own the domain (not the registra) and you just get a few pages listing the company as a registra of domains.

And looking up some domains which would have complemented .coms and .co.uk ones I have, and they're just those pages inviting you to make an offer on them.

I still think I might go for a few, as I want to get .de and .ie for something, but I'd be concerned that if these 1000s of domains that have been registered only ever seem to have link farms and advertising junk on them, people might start to write them off before even visiting them.

For a UK market I don't know that they'd be that good, commercially. I think people will feel a lot safer with .co.uk shops and sites, if only for the reason that they'll be in the UK - or you'd think so anyway. And shops like Dress For Less, based out of Germany but huge all over Europe, seem to be fine with a .com.

I can't really talk though - this is someone who bought a .ws domain. :no:

[Leddy]

.eu is horrible. Who suddenly appends .eu to the end of a domain by instinct?

[Colin-uk Veteran]

.eu is the new .me (e.g. going no where)

[digitalsoft]

i like .eu, though i thought it would be better if it was .co.eu - just seems right and more commercial like instead of "free domain" kinda looking name.. ;)

[James B]

i like .eu, though i thought it would be better if it was .co.eu - just seems right and more commercial like instead of "free domain" kinda looking name.. ;)

Yeah. It reminds me of all those people that got a .be domain for free.

Check out any domain weblog or forum and I think they all still say .com is king, followed by .net (or your local extension, like .it or .de).

If you're EuroNews I can see why you'd want it, but for most commercial companies I think .com or local would be fine. MTV has mtv.de, mtv.co.uk etc - why'd they need .eu?

[former1]

Personally I think the .eu suffix has a chance. Although I think it'll take a while for it to be globally known.

For example if you own a european courier service, that operates in all european states - but not outside them. Would you rather register all the local domains? Or just register the .eu?

Another example, a hosting comapny wanting to emphasise that they're based in europe.

The .me.uk etc. however we're complete useless, who'd want that kind of domain suffix in the first place?

Whilst I personally think the .eu domain has a fighting chance.

[Malisk]

I and my company already own the .se domains we're interested in and don't see a major reason to go for a .eu one as well. They feel a bit redundant to me, although I can see a point if a company has a localized home page under a national domain, and one more aimed for a European crowd under .eu. But if our company were to deal with more EU countries, I'm pretty sure we'd just translate our .se page. It's not that big of a deal really, and when you use your domain name in e-mail signatures and elsewhere, there use to be little confusion over what URL a company has. And *especially* becaue .eu is a far more uncommon prefix than .com and national domains, they probably won't be guessed much either.

[rob.derosa]

just another attempt by the EU to worm its way into every single aspect of our lives... :rolleyes:

[Malisk]

just another attempt by the EU to worm its way into every single aspect of our lives... :rolleyes:

Well, they aren't mandatory, so... :)

I do believe the .eu tld can be quite useful for some companies dealing with many European customers, and suit quite neatly for those, especially with the more free market EU is providing to its members for cross-country relations. And I don't think it's wrong with more options like this one.