brand, only represent 46% of the number of registered .eu domains. Cyrillic domain , a top-level domain using Cyrillic letters was put into operation on 1 June 2016. A Cyrillic domain was needed because Bulgaria, a member of the EU, uses the Cyrillic alphabet. Keyboards and smartphones used in Bulgaria have special key combinations to change script, but in order to avoid that, all-Cyrillic addresses are used. The EU is called () in Bulgarian Cyrillic, but (in Cyrillic letters) is much too similar to .ec (in Latin letters), the existing top-level domain of Ecuador, so was chosen. (While some Latin and Cyrillic letters may look identical, they have different character encodings and are distinct for data processing purposes. Consequently, there is an opportunity for misrepresentation unless steps are taken to prevent abusive registration). EURid has a rule that the second-level domain name must be in the same script as the top-level domain, so Cyrillic second-level domains must go under instead of .eu, and all domain names under .ею must be spelt using Cyrillic. Older Cyrillic domains under .eu were cloned into at its launch. As of December 2022, there are 1,320 registered domains under . Greek domain An application for a top-level domain using Greek letters, was submitted in 2016. The application was originally turned down because it was too visually similar to .eu. The Greek name of the EU is (), but would be too visually similar to .ee, the top-level domain of Estonia. In 2019 steps were taken towards approving as a domain. The proposal was to have one and the same registry manager of .eu, .eю and , which shall make sure second-level domains are not visually similar and in the long-term assign all Cyrillic domains under .eu to and all Greek letters domains to . domain names were officially launched in November 2019. As of December 2022, there are 2,625 registered domains under . Allegations of abuse Domain name speculation, domain name warehousing and cybersquatting are always features of the launch of any new TLD; however, this was more widespread in the case of the .eu launch. Bob Parsons, CEO and co-founder of GoDaddy, criticized the landrush process designed by EURid. Particularly, he condemned the use of shell companies by some registrars. In his blog, he stated "These companies, instead of only registering their real active registrars, created hundreds of new "phantom" registrars." Parsons cited a