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PRESS RELEASE

Germany’s Internet Country Code .de Turned 30 – 16 Million Times of Digital 
Diversity and Digital Identity

On 5 November 1986 Germany went online as No. 10 country on the Internet

On 5 November 1986 Germany went online. Today countless Germans use the 
Internet in all its facets every day. A major part of this communication is
taking place via domains with the German extension .de. Discover our 
anniversary press release and the broad diversity, the wealth of ideas and the
innovative spirit of German domains at 
https://www.denic.de/en/features/30-years-de/. Here, during the week 
following the anniversary, we briefly
present examples of .de domains from the most multifarious fields of life – a 
different one every day.

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Dear Sir or Madam,

Every day, countless people in Germany are active in social networks, writing 
millions of e-mails and posting thousands of tweets. A major share of
this communication is effected via domains ending with the German country 
code .de – not to mention the myriad websites visited in Germany day in, day
out. Even with .de registrations lately slowing down: What started on a small 
scale on 5 November 30 years ago has become an integral part of a global
medium that is indispensable for all of us today in our daily routine – and 
which comes up with fresh innovations every day. The Internet sector thus
is one of the growth drivers of the German economy. There is hardly any 
industry that does not consistently become ever more dependent on the digital
infrastructure.

>From a Playground for Tinkerers To a Global Playing Field

30 years ago, it had been unimaginable, today it is the norm: text message 
services, job, car and real estate marketplaces, travel and rating portals,
crowdfunding and streaming platforms, online shopping, banking, petitions and 
campaigns, search engines, virtual forums, encyclopaedias and
universities – the Internet is present in all fields of life and has made 
many things easier, more convenient and more comfortable. Business and
economic processes are getting increasingly interlinked with the digital 
world, Industry 4.0 and the Internet of Things with billions of networked
objects are gaining ground fast.

Communicating, using media, searching for information or performing online 
transactions and much more: About 84 percent of the German-speaking
population, from digital natives to silver surfers, are online today. 65 
percent of these use the Internet daily, on average for more than two hours,
57 percent also on mobile devices – and the trend is rising. 87 percent of 
German enterprises with a staff of more than ten have their own website.
And roughly 20 percent of the non-food turnover in the German retail sector 
is generated online by now.

Domains – Signposts on the Internet and Digital Identity

Behind many of these offers is a .de domain. Acting as signposts on the 
Internet, domains are an integral part of each e-mail address and help to make
websites and other online services easily accessible to humans without the 
necessity to keep in mind endless sequences of numbers, as computers use
them to communicate with each other.

Different from a profile in the social networks, with a personal domain users 
are free to design their web presence according to their own ideas. And
in addition to that, they will maintain full sovereignty of their personal 
data. The domain serves as the hub of a customised individualised web
presence; it is the core of one's personal online presentation and integrates 
complementary web offers, such as social media profiles.

The average digital identity, which enterprises or private persons create 
with a .de domain, is 14 characters long. Operation of all the technical
services related to a German domain rests with DENIC eG, who has been 
providing it for 20 years. DENIC is a not-for profit cooperative based in
Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Today, it has a membership of more than 320 
companies from the ICT sector and promotes the preservation of the open, free
and secure Internet on the international stage.

Number 3 in the World – Facts and Figures about .de

Featuring a current inventory of more than 16.1 million domains, .de is 
number two in the world after China (19.5 million) among all the country codes
used on the Internet. Referred to all the endings that exist (Top Level 
Domains), .de is one of the top three, following .com (127.3 million) and .cn.

Due to DENIC’s liberal terms and conditions that allow everybody to register 
a domain, .de domains already at an early stage were used not only by
business and industry but also developed into a favourite option among 
private users who wanted to build their own "homepage". As a result, growth
of .de was very dynamic: In only three years, between 1996 and 1999, domain 
numbers surged from 20,000 to one million, and subsequent further sharp
rises brought registration numbers up to 5 million by 2001 and to 10 million 
by 2006. While in the boom years, mean increase rates easily exceeded 100
percent, growth has consolidated in the meantime in the now mature market. 
However, still scoring rates of about one percent, .de continues to gain
roughly 150,000 domains every year.

Statistically, every fifth inhabitant of the Federal Republic of Germany has 
a .de domain today. About one third of these are registered for private
individuals, roughly two thirds for enterprises, and a remaining three 
percent for institutions and organisations, such as authorities, associations,
clubs and other initiatives. In total, the number of domain holders amounts 
to some 7.8 million. All these use one or several domains as their digital
visiting card – for their own website, but also for personalised e-mail 
addresses.

Its high technical stability and resilience have made the German Internet 
extension a highly regarded brand that is known throughout the world. The
confidence of the German Internet community manifests itself not only by 
.de's large share of more than 65 percent in the domestic market, thus
leaving other extensions like .com (20 percent) far behind in Germany. 
Another clear evidence is the domain holders’ loyalty, resulting in a roughly
ten years’ average life of a .de domain.

Studies conducted by the Internet industry and independent initiatives, such 
as the Anti-Phishing Working Group, also regularly give good ratings to
the German Top Level Domain: The proportion of domains which is not used at 
all or used for criminal purposes, such as spam or phishing, is rather low
under .de, by international standards. This does not only result in a great 
relevance for search engines, it also underpins the high standards met by
the German TLD when it comes to security on the Internet.

High security and wide reach combined with consistently low prices also 
render .de domains attractive for domain holders from outside Germany: Roughly
7 percent or 1.1 million domains under .de are registered from abroad. 
Holders come from 217 different countries, most of them from the USA or the
Netherlands.

The popularity of German web offers is reflected by the traffic rates DENIC's 
infrastructure has to manage on a 24/7/365 basis. More than 40,000 times
per second, users call a web service using a .de domain; this is more than 
seven billion calls per day. Added to this are 300 users per second who
want to know if a specific domain is free, which means that 26 million users 
consult DENIC's whois information service every day.


Best regards

Stefanie Welters
Public Relations
--
DENIC eG | Kaiserstraße 75 - 77 | 60329 Frankfurt am Main | GERMANY
E-Mail: presse AT denic.de | Fon: +49 69 27235-274 | Fax: -235
https://www.denic.de

Angaben nach § 25a Absatz 1 GenG:
DENIC eG (Sitz: Frankfurt am Main). Vorstand: Helga Krüger, Martin 
Küchenthal, Andreas Musielak, Dr. Jörg Schweiger
Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats: Thomas Keller. Eingetragen unter Nr. 770 im 
Genossenschaftsregister, Amtsgericht Frankfurt am Main

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