.de

DENIC eG administers .de, the country code assigned to Germany and the largest such extension in Europe with roughly 17.4 million registrations. Delegated in 1986, it ranks among the oldest country domains still in continuous operation. Applicants must supply an administrative contact at a German address, a requirement that keeps the namespace anchored to the domestic market. German firms treat the extension as a marker of local credibility, and domestic adoption runs high enough that .de exceeds all but a handful of generic extensions by volume.