Too many unused .gr domain names?

Recently i have been developing a few small web sites. Some of them are only hobby projects.  Naturally i looked for a good domain name for them.

My search for good domain names indicated that most are already taken. Not very surprising as such, ofcourse ,but when i look up a domain name and it turns up unavailable i have the strange impulse to see what its being used for. Well, as it turns out for 80% (number out of my ass) of the domain names i look for they were not being used. Some of them have been registered as far as  seven years ago and are still “comming soon”. Others resolve to nothing.

So, we have a strange phenomenon here. While the greek web space is very small, the domain name address space is running out for no useful reason. That bothers me. I don’t mind it so much if i can’t find a good domain name because it’s being used. But so many domain names being unavailable and completely useless for many years is really infuriating.

This reminded me reading a few years back in EETT’s policies (the Greek national body regulating domain names), that a domain name that was unsused for more than 2 (or 3?) years would be expire. Maybe i should turn evil mode on and send a little email to EETT :p