At the end of last week, Mr. Laurent Schütz of the City of Lucerne’s fire brigade registered the one-millionth domain name with the ending .ch. The holder of the one millionth domain name is Laurent Schütz and comes from Lucerne. EZ14 stands for “Einsatzzug 14” (Engine 14) of the City of Lucerne’s fire brigade. Laurent Schütz had the idea of setting up the website a few days before he registered the domain name. He intends to use the website to post photos of joint excursions for his colleagues.
“I was very surprised when I heard that I’d registered the one-millionth .ch domain name. It was something I’d never reckoned with when I registered this internet address on the SWITCH website one night. It’s something I’ll certainly never forget for the rest of my life”, was Mr. Schütz’s reaction when he was phoned by SWITCH.
Switzerland has one of the highest domain name densities anywhere in the world. On average, every tenth inhabitant has a domain name ending in .ch.
SWITCH let the Swiss internet community take part in this special event in the run-up to the registration of the one-millionth domain name. In the national competition held on the www.1-million.ch website, there was a total of one million centimes to be won (overall prize money of CHF 10,000, divided up into a main prize of CHF 5000 and ten second prizes worth CHF 500 each). No fewer than 3269 people entered their guesses as to where the holder of the one-millionth domain name would come from. And two-hundred of them got the right square on the map.
The winners of the competition will be announced shortly on the www.1-million.ch website. SWITCH will be publishing a detailed interview with Laurent Schütz, including a photo, in the media on Thursday, 30 August 2007.
Click here for the news release on the SWITCH website in English. It is also available in French, German and Italian.