So, what is everybody's opinion on the .eu domains (If they ever become available!!)?

Do people think they are going to be popular of yet another TLD that nobody really wants?
Sure people still want those .com's but do you feel that .eu may be a suitable rival?

123-reg.co.uk actually have a great deal on pre-registration of these domains.
Before you attack me and tell me that pre-registration isn't yet possible and they are a scam etc, 123-reg offer a "nothing to loose" deal (unless they go under before the domain's come out and that seems rather unlikely).
Basically they charge you £15+vat now and once proper pre-registration comes out they personally will only put one person forward for each name.
If you get the domain, fine, you then pay the normal registration fee.
Don't get your domain, you get the £15+vat refunded in full, they keep nothing.

Anyway, that is by the by, I'm just interested in "those in the business" and what they think about the .eu's.

EU will have to compete with .UK and .DE - those are big, but not as big as Dot Com ;)

.EU - also has the disadvantage of being so new, even the Euro as a curency, despite being nice, smart and convieniant still needs a bit more time.

I like .EU as a concept - but I think it'll take a while to catch on.

.eu will be big.

I will for sure, register a lot of .eu :)

Originally posted by Bladerunner
If they ever become available!!)?

They will become available :) Probably

Do people think they are going to be popular of yet another TLD that nobody really wants?
Sure people still want those .com's but do you feel that .eu may be a suitable rival?

Not as popular as .com, ok, but they will become very popular for everyone doing business in Europe.

Well
We do the centralnic domains like .us.com .uk.com and .eu.com

In order of popularity:

.uk.com
.us.com
.gb.com
.uk.net
.eu.com

Ok, I know its not a direct analogy, but it indicates that people are still moreinterested in establishing national rather than continental identities.

To back this up, we sell many more country level domains like .ca,.uk and .us than we do of the non country specific ones like .cc and .nu

Gordon

We have received many enquiries on .eu domains - many more than we had on .us pre-launch.

The problem I have with registrars taking pre-registrations is that we have no idea at this point in time how the initial release of these domains will even be handled.

There has even been some talk that the Registry may be dealing directly with all Sunrise (trademark) and Landrush (initial public release) registrations. If they were to institute a policy where the registrant will have to directly deal with the registry - no agents, no fraud - and you need to have a bona fide EU affiliation in order to participate in the initial releases, some of the people who have paid their money to be "first in line" will simply be SOL.

We DON'T YET KNOW how the initial domain registration process will work, so assuming that it will look like any of the highly criticized Sunrise and Landrush processes to date could cost you money.

Be careful unless you have money to burn - or consider the risk worth the possible reward.

-t

That is kind of the way I was looking at it.
Nobody really knows for sure how registration is going to work.
I felt that £15 per domain wasn't a great deal to loose.

If it goes through and I get it, great reward.
If 123-reg.co.uk do as they say they will and I don't get it I lose nothing.
If I've been lied to then all I've lost is £60.
So OK, £60 is £60 but as above the possible rewards seem to out-weigh the losses.