A couple of short weeks ago Eurid announced that the wholesale rate for .eu domains would drop. The fact that the drop is by a factor of 50% has provoked some interesting reactions.
The question that needs to be asked, however, is whether the price drop is simply an attempt by Eurid to boost numbers.
When a new TLD or ccTLD opens you can expect there to be a high level of initial interest and then this drops off.. IIn some cases, however, the drop off in interest can be so great as to practically stagnate the TLD or worry its backers so much that they start giving away domains.
In the case of Eurid and .eu it’s a hard one to call.
From their recent announcements it sounds like they are trying to address some of the criticism that has been laid at their feet, but it may be too little far too late.
Well, it isn’t a complete surprise that they drop the prices. Eurid is a not-for-profit organization, so they are not “supposed” to have a (huge) profit. They make a profit, so a reduction of the prices is a logical thing to do. They even indicated a target price of 5 eur per domain per year before they started operations. So to most insiders, it is not a surprise at all.
Yes but EURid is an incompetently run organisation and the price drop is really intended to lessent the domain renewals problem that will arise from April onwards. A large number of .eu domains will be dumped by people who bought them for speculative purposes.
From watching the whole .eu debacle, I’ve come to the conclusion that EURid should never have been awarded the contract to run .eu ccTLD. The management was incompetent and from a technological viewpoint, they launched a half-ready registry indicating that there was a high level of technological incompetence as well. As for dealing with the problems of cybersquatting and domain warehousing, their legal department is woefully inadequate given the scale of the problem. There really should be an investigation into how EURid was awarded the contract and the competence of the people who made the decision and advised the Commission.