öko.de is the first .de domain with umlauts –  350,000 domain applications received

On the first day on which it became possible to register internationalized domain names (IDNs), in which numerous diacritics including umlauts and accents are permitted too, there was already a massive demand for them. By 18.00, DENIC, the registry for .de domains, had received approximately 350,000 applications. Some 40,000 completed processing on the first day, and 15,000 IDNs were registered. The other applications were doubles, i.e. they referred to domains already registered. By way of comparison, DENIC usually has no more than a few thousand registration wishes to handle on a normal day. DENIC and its employees had spent weeks preparing intensively for the start of IDN registration. Despite that, the registry faced a number of technical hitches right at the beginning, but was fortunately able to rectify them quickly. It believes that it will be able to process all the applications by half-way through the week.

The first .de domain with an umlaut is öko.de. It was received within seconds of the start of registration at 10.00 on Monday morning. Other much-coveted domains were snapped up quickly too, including müller.de, schröder.de, krüger.de and jäger.de. The registration process adhered strictly to the principle of "first come, first served". The new domain holder was thus whoever managed to get their application into DENIC’s automatic registration system first. It is easy to find out if a domain has already been registered by consulting "Domain query/whois". Up-to-date information on the number of IDN requests received and processed is available (in German) at http://www.denic.de/de/domains/idns/start.html. The three figures show: number of applications received, number already processed and number of IDNs registered.