World's largest companies unprepared for e-business in Europe
Days after the '.eu' domain name was formally adopted by the Telecommunications Council, a study by APCO has shown that almost none of the websites of the world's 50 largest companies are ready to do business across Europe. The study claims that only half of the world's largest companies answered e-mail requests for information on their European operations within one week and that the majority of corporate websites belonging to the world's 50 largest corporations fail to communicate in any other language than English. Also, less than one third of the world's 50 largest corporations list a telephone number for their European corporate headquarters on their corporate website. The study also concluded that Europe is increasingly becoming a 'stakeholder society', which was one of the reasons behind the Commission's proposal for a .eu domain name. The new domain name should encourage European electronic commerce, thus allowing a new breed of websites to do business across Europe.