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There's more confusion over .eu domain assignments than stinkeye at the French Embassy. Lumbering American giants were beat out by smaller, quicker natives for domain dibs, as the same natives are crying foul over American speculators in a domain gold rush.

Companies Scramble For Their .EU Domain
According to the Wall Street Journal, AT&T screwed up its application and lost out on ATT.eu to a Polish stainless steel product company. The head honcho at the Polish ATT wasn't a bit sympathetic to the behemoth telecom's complaints:

"We didn't have a chance to get ATT.com," he said, and skipped out the door, domain in the bag.

William M. Bulkely reports that American companies are accusing EURid of rigging the system to favor European countries, while Europeans blame Americans for the "imbroglio."

We blame Mr. Bulkely for using the word "imbroglio." It sounds like an Italian sandwich toping. I'll have a salami sandwich with lettuce, tomato, some imbroglio, some pepperoncini, mayo

Other big names that lost out for being too slow on the application draw were Hertz, Eurostar, and EDS. A fifth of applications were rejected because of bureaucratic pedantry.

The U.S. Embassy in Brussels, for example, didn't waffle on getting its application in for USEmbassy.eu and USA.eu, only to have the application rejected because processors viewed it as coming from Belgium rather than America. The Embassy said "fudge ya then," kept usembassy.gov, and went back to eating their Belgian chocolate.

At the end of it all comes the blame game as jilted Europeans blamed American speculators for not being able to get the domains they wanted. American companies bagged on the Europeans, pot and kettle style, for doing the same with dot-com domains and then crying about like-for-like behavior.

From outside, it's all quite funny - like watching kids scramble for the last pop cycle, shouting "no fair!" at every opportunity.

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