The new .eu domain opens to the public today, after four months of being available to businesses during a "sunrise" period. Those of us based in the EU can take advantage of the new domain, which is hoped to eventually challenge the supremacy of the .com domain.
Over 300,000 .eu names have been registered in the past 4 months, but that still leaves potentially millions of names available for budding internet businesses as it opens to the public. Speaking to the BBC Marc van Wesemael, head of .eu administrator Eurid said "Nobody knows exactly how many registrations of new domain names to expect". It seems as though the popularity of the new domain has been too much for the company though as their website is struggling to cope with the demand.
With over 456 million people living in the European Union the potential demand could be huge, so far it has been Germany who lead the way in registrations during the sunrise period, accounting for 28.2% of all domains registered. Fierce battles over trademarks ensured when companies were allowed to register their domains, discovery.eu was registered by The Discovery Channel, just four minutes after the registration opened.