Russia will join us. They just don't know it yet. (ducks to avoid things thrown by the Russian in the office)

I am sure the current citizens of the EU don't know it yet either, nor will they be consulted when it comes.

No, we will have several referenda until we get one right.

Yandex headquarter is in Moscow, but they are registered in Netherlands as well.

Perhaps because the writer is in London. You're right though, it shouldn't be.

"Europe" would be correct. EU is wrong since it's the economic and political union.

Well, the majority of Russia's population does reside on the European continent.

Equating EU with Europe is a common fallacy.

EU is a political entity (recent), Europe a geographical entity (ancient). There is an overlap of people who live within both, but that's not the case with Russia.

I simply understood the EU label on that TechCrunch page to refer to Europe, not the political entity. I don't think that's an unreasonable way to read it in a journalistic context. There is no other readily available shorthand for referring to the continent, particularly since EUR refers to the currency.

But it's no the same as the European Union which is the economic and political union. The correct label would be "Europe".

NA, SA, EU, SEA

EU can be used to describe the continent and the union.

Using "EU" to refer to Europe is about the same as using "USA" to refer to North America. And, in this case, tagging an article about something in Canada with "USA".

I'm not so sure. Wikipedia doesn't show it as a disambiguation for the continent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU_(disambiguation)

It is extremely commonly used shorthand, though.