TechCrunch Gets to the Heart of Fresh Top Level Domain Failure

.eu has 3.4 million registrations. TechCrunch calls it a failure.

Is .eu a success or failure?

The country code domain name representing a whole bunch of countries has 3.4 million registrations following five years. That’s pretty darn good compared to most recent domain name launches.

But Robin Wauters of TechCrunch calls it a failure in a post today “3.4 million .eu domain names registered in five years – I call dismal failure“.

I think he’s right.

Wauters points to a bunch of numbers.

Half of .eu registrations were in the first month of launch, meaning it took five years to add another 1.7 million domain registrations. (And a lot of those initial registrations were part of a bogus trademark and local presence game.) Even at 3.4 million domains that’s regarding 1.4% of all domains registered. A “mere blip”, Wauters calls it.

Now that blip may be a nice business for EURid. But is .eu really successful?

Wauters points out the actual usage of the domain, which I think is the real story. He lives in the EU and makes this observation:

How many firms do you know that actively advertise their .eu domain name rather than the .com or the local country domain? How many times have you thought of a good domain name and immediately thought to yourself: I need to get the .eu domain name, pronto.

Amen.

In a press release regarding .eu’s growth, EURid points out that .eu registrations are growing at a faster pace than ccTLD registrations in a number of countries. For example, .eu registrations grew 264% in Czech Republic over the past five years while .cz registrations increased 207%.

But here’s the thing: everyone in Czech Republic uses .cz. Not .eu. When I visited last year I saw 99% .cz, a few .coms, and maybe one or two .eu domain names.

That’s not a success in my book. A successful business for .eu, but not a successful domain name.