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Even when the domains are free, Irish small businesses prefer .com to .ie

Kevin Murphy, May 16, 2012, 12:56:44 (UTC), Domain Registrars

Irish small businesses overwhelmingly chose .com domains over .ie and .eu during the first year of a Blacknight Solutions web presence freebie initiative.
Blacknight said today signed up 10,000 Irish small business customers through Getting Business Online, a partnership with Google and the local postal service, which it launched a year ago.
The scheme, which Google has been promoting with local partners in various territories around the world, gives companies a free domain and basic web hosting for a year.
According to Blacknight managing director Michele Neylon, 61% of sign-ups chose a .com domain, while 21% chose Ireland’s .ie, 13% chose .eu and 4% chose .biz.
“The way .ie is run, you have to go through an extensive validation process, and it’s also restricted what domains you can register,” Neylon, a regular critic of .ie policy, said.
As the initiative is just a year old, it’s not yet clear how many of these 10,000 companies plan to stick around on paid services.

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Comments (5)

  1. that’s good info to know…
    ~Patricia – DomainBELL

  2. James says:

    All this proves is that 61% of Blacknight’s customers must be criminals. 😛

  3. Acro says:

    The dot .ie namespace needs to lift its ridiculous restrictions in order to grow.

  4. Alan Dodd says:

    Very interesting findings. I am a little surprised but not totally.
    “sure this box apartment is worth €400,000 even though it’s made out of dodgy pyrite. Sure we’ll go for a snobby approach to .ie. Now I’m off to some golf course. I’ll get the cash from some German bank to pay for the obviously inflated mortgage”.
    Sorry I digress :0)

Leave a Reply to Acro