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After five years, “useless” TLD has two web sites

Kevin Murphy, September 27, 2024, 15:24:58 (UTC), Domain Registries

An IDN ccTLD criticized as “useless” by locals when it was approved five years ago has fewer domains today than it did at launch, and a portfolio of web sites even a Simpson could count on one hand (twice).

The Greek-script .ευ (.xn--qxa6a) is one of two internationalized domain name versions of the European Union’s .eu, operated by EURid. It was approved by ICANN in September 2019 and went live two months later.

Today, it has just 2,561 domains under management, about 200 fewer than it did at the end of 2019, just a month after launch, according to stats on EURid’s web site.

A quick google on Google for .ευ domains returns results for only two indexed web sites, while googling on Bing returns four, of which two are undeveloped placeholders.

It’s not much of a result for a TLD that ICANN spent nine years twisting itself in knots to approve over the concerns of evaluators who thought it was visually too confusing to other two-letter strings.

Greek domainers criticized .ευ upon its approval, with Konstantinos Zournas calling it the “worst extension ever”, due largely to the fact that “EU” in Greek is εε, not ευ.



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