Slashdot Mirror
Google Propping Up Typosquatting Biz?
An anonymous reader writes "Google is making oodles of cash placing ads on a vast sea of otherwise vacant Web sites that do little more than capitalize on misspelled domain name names, according to a story in today's Washington Post. From the story: 'Google Inc., which runs the largest ad network on the Internet, is making millions of dollars a year by filling otherwise unused Web sites with ads. In many instances, these ad-filled pages appear when users mistype an Internet address, such as BistBuy.com. This new form of advertising is turning into a booming business that some say is cluttering the Internet and could be violating trademark rules.'"
I'll actually have to read the article to see what is going on.
...yeah...How is this news? Typosquatting has been around for a long long time. Did I just make that word up?
http://bastbuy.com/
Does it still apply?
Typosquatter site BistBuy.com reports record profits and an all-time high hit count.
Huh?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I blame DNS.
We should have stuck with numbers. In hex. Would have kept out all the lamers, nannies, and governments.
Heck we should go back to uucp over dial-up connections.
Back in the olden days of 2004, we used to call it "cybersquatting." Kids these days and their crazy terminology. And their music.
And what if I'm out to buy a bust?
I imagine very few businesses can legitimately claim that the ads on bistbuy.com would confuse anyone looking for bestbuy.com.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Safari can't find the server.
Safari can't open the page "http://www.bistbuy.com/" because it can't find the server "www.bistbuy.com".
This is a non story. I really don't understand how anyone would hold Google culpable for this.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Where did you learn to read? American Idiot school?
Quit cluttering up slashdot with your irrelivent comments.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
It's actually quite easy. It should be based on content. If all you see is a list of search categories and lots of ads, it's typo-squatting. If you see original articles and compelling content, it's legit.
Hmm... bistbuy.com doesnt resolve. Also, the only reference on archive.org from bistbuy.com was in Apr 06, 2004: http://web.archive.org/web/20040406094329/http://w ww.bistbuy.com/ ... Not sure where they are getting their information from...
Their two other examples, rearthlink.net and dearthlink.net, also don't resolve. At least their pages at archive.org offer a little more evidence: http://web.archive.org/web/20040331061435/http://w ww.dearthlink.net/
new business?? this is older than the habit of shitting sitting down !
please excuse my apathy
This could be an instance of "if you can't beat them, join them." There's going to be typosquatting no matter what. Since it's not going away Google might as well a) make some money off of it, and b) know where all these fake sites are to remove them from their listings.
Not saying it's the right thing to do, just an idea.
I feel that people are confusing "evil" with profit. Google went public. Google is a business. Google now aims (moreso at least) to generate profit for its owners. But doing something that makes money for a company does not make it evil? Who does this hurt?
This link should have been in the article: http://www.google.com/domainpark/
The article claims a vague "millions" of dollars at stake, but I'd be interested to know the actual numbers: I know that when I find myself at one of these pages, I am least likely to click on an ad.
it's down
Firehed - Unfortunately, thanks to medical breakthroughs, common sense is not as common as it once was.
I think the reporter needs to do a little more research. If your a company who advertises on google, you have control over what kinds of searches match your add. If you find that a certain search term brings up your company more then you'd like, you can simply append a "-[search term]" to your access control list. Problem solved. The reporter uses BistBuy.com as a example. Could Best Buy be heading this report? Maybe Best Buy has some incompitent employees? Nooo, couldn't be ;)
how long till someone writes an entire essay now defending Google and showing how this practise is actually advancing world peace and giving the oppressed a new weapon to fight for their freedom?
This is a sin of omission, rather than commission. Whether or not you have an issue with the religious terminology, the concept is a useful one to be taught in schools but doesn't for whatever reason, but the idea that it may not be "secular" enough may play into it.
If they don't do anything illegal with their site, it should be their right to whatever name they want. Are you going to tell me that no one can open a restaurant near a McDonalds? It's the same deal. It may feel shady. Some may be shady, but it is only fair as long as they are not stealing or commiting other crime with it.
It's a logical progression of this thought that allows corporations to force people off their legal sites because they have the same name. You don't like EToy suing etoy? Deal with the "typosquatters."
First, there was the highly enlightening 404, if there was a resolution at all. Then there was the typosquatters. My fav was Micros0ft.com.
But all of those are better than intercepts, which are surprisingly common these days in 'walled gardens'. I'll take a squatter, and if google can make some $$ on them, so much the better.
DNS is primitive, insecure, rife for diddling, and as goofy as SMTP. Yes, these were all good in their day. And yes, they were made out of brittle plastic, not visionary armor. So, google makes a few bucks. Ho fracking hum. More power to them. If I get a wrong phone #, does someone give me a list of alternatives? No, but they're often helpful as in "oh, that's a 6 not a 9" or something. With DNS you get a squat, not found, or a typosquat. How droll.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
This is all from GoDaddy's website
Registry Status: REDEMPTIONPERIOD
Registry Status: redemptionPeriod
Domain Name: BISTBUY.COM
Registrar: DOMAINDOORMAN, LLC
Whois Server: whois.domaindoorman.com
Referral URL: http://www.domaindoorman.com/
Name Server: NS3.12GF6.COM
Name Server: NS2.12GF6.COM
Name Server: NS1.12GF6.COM
Status: REDEMPTIONPERIOD
EPP Status: redemptionPeriod
Updated Date: 29-Apr-2006
Creation Date: 21-Nov-2005
Expiration Date: 21-Nov-2006
>>> Last update of whois database: Sun, 30 Apr 2006 15:46:50 EDT
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Frankly, I don't care who advertises on sites I don't visit. I navigate using bookmarks, links, and autocompletion.
Someone must have some big fat fingers if they hit the "i" when going for the "e"...
:)
nit pick
Now you know why Microsoft is working hard on a set of tools that prevent typosquatting.
However in this case, Google is pretty obviously doing *evil* by the very definition of the word, and that definitely speaks bad of it.
Google specifically has tools and offers for filling vacant domains with ads... WHO would use that except domains of generic words and typosquatters? No excuses this time, Google.
Has anybody thought to add a feature to firefox (or maybe an extension) whereby if a user misspells a domain name, it gives the option to correct the spelling?
Seriously, if you misspell, Google will spot it and suggest the right spelling and URL in most cases. Why bother typing in the URL?
Beyond that, isn't it time that web browsers reached the point where they could spot and fix obvious typing errors like "ww" instead of "www" or missing periods like "wwwbestbuy.com" instead of "www.bestbuy.com?"
Surely this would be an easy and useful improvement.
Three Squirrels
They same principle applies to domain names. So don't start a web site that has anything to do with the restaurant business called "McDanolds.com" — you'll get a cease-and-desist letter faster than you can say, "your french fries suck".
This new form of advertising is turning into a booming business that some say is cluttering the Internet and could be violating trademark rules. Ahem... add to that 1- confusing internet users 2- shifting revenue from acutal sites that employ people, to some black hole looking to suck more clicks in. ...oh wait nevermind, Google is the best in the world, and they are my master, and I love Gooooogle sooooo much. OMG Ponies!!!
One of the biggest problems with the internet and legal issues like this is that lack of ability for people to use analogy to see how inconsistant the laws and regulations can be. Imagine if everytime a new book came out, somebody put out a crappy one with an almost identical name. Go to the book store to get a present for your mother and you come back with "The DiVinco Code". Such there are lots of weasels who would clain they are not the same, but clearly this is a NO value added knockoff. If somebody wants to create sites that show advertisements, they should either pay advertising for other web sites, or add value in a way that brings people in and spreads the word. Not only is the networking traffic created by this a loss, there is also the loss in time for those people who have to evaluate the squatter and determine if it is the desired site. Trademarks allow organizations to be referenced to, and develop a reputation. Think of companies like NewEgg, benchmarks like Anandtech, articles like Slashdot. If you tell people to visit slashdot for news on technology(like I have many times) it hurts Slashdot AND the viewer when they mistakingly go to slushdot, or sashdot and this devalues the ability of organizations to build a name based upon their trademarks. If my friends go to Neweg(by mistake) and gets faulty video card from a lousy organization, this hurts my friends, Newegg, and everybody else who is duped into making a purchase from an undeserving company. I realize that money will be a driving factor in this chaos, but I think it would be interesting if there was a project(maybe firefox or DNS based) where people could register all of the squatter scam sites and keep an updated database so that when such mistakes were made, the correction was made before any harm could be done. Anybody up for it?
Google made 2.253 billion USD in one quarter. While the article was vague how many millions it really is, "millions" instead of "tens of millions" or "hundreds of millions" still seems like a drop in the bucket. It goes on to imply that it's quite a bit by quoting Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google:
Google won't disclose how much revenue it is earning from ads on these types of sites, but chief executive Eric Schmidt said in an interview last week, "It's a lot of money."
Did he mean that Google makes a lot of money from ads in general or from ads on typo sites? I can't tell because the article doesn't give me the source of that quote. However, I find it doubtful that Schmidt would be so explicit about Google making money off of typos, even if they did.
In any case, the issue is not as clean-cut as the article implies. Whose responsibility is it to police trademark infringements? Hasn't it always been the holder of the trademark? Google making money off of it does suggest some kind of responsbility on their part as well though. However, Google does provide an avenue for these people to complain and have the affliates delisted from their ad program.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
I have an even better idea... let the marketplace provide services for location of commercial websites: say maybe, have a list of words ("key words") that the internet browser could type in at a website, and then that website would facilitate finding the desired website, based on a huge database of known websites.
-------
Incite and flee.
Google isn't making the pages itself, it is just serving up the ads. As far as google is concerned, these pages are just like any other customers, except that (as stated in the article) google goes out of its way to remove sites from its ad program if there is a suspicion of trademark infringment.
I'm sorry, but "Bistbuy" is not a "typo," it's a horrible and awful misspelling that a 3 year old wouldn't make.
What?
could these be typosquatters that try to earn money by putting in google adsense and not google directly? has the author of the article checked the "ownership" of those domains?
They are just serving them ads.
Answer me that question once you go to a drugstore on Sunday morning, and you're tying to get rid of that hangover before doing your Sunday church appearance. With a splitting headache, then go to the pain relief isle, but B4Y3R aspirin, that looks just like BAYER aspirin minus the chemicals that relieve pain. But, you forgive the company because its now owned by Google and they owe it to their stockholders to put such products on the shelf.
Allow me to fix your analogy. The company printing the labels on the fraudulent bottles is now owned by Google. Saying that they are culpable in all of this seems like quite a bit of a stretch.
http://salshdot.com/
googlr.com redirects to google
googlw.com redirects to google
gppgle.com redirects to google
foofle.com redirects to google
hoohle.com:
What you need, when you need it. Hoohle provides all you need in the way of travel, entertainment, real estate listings, and especially adult entertainment. Specializes in Female ejaculation, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Hidden Cameras.
what kind of idiot types BistBuy.com
In many instances, these ad-filled pages appear when users mistype an Internet address, such as BistBuy.com.
"bistbuy.com" does not resolve. (or did we slashdot them? THAT would be justice) Appears to be parked but not assigned by verisign?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Nothing appears to link bistbuy.com (if it ever was a valid destination) to Google.
It's doubtful anything would. Bist sounds like Best, but it's highly unlikely to be a typo (the keys are too far apart). It's really talking about sites like Nest Buy or Beat Buy.
My opinion: if Verizon does not want Virizon.com to show google ads, it should pay $50 or whatever it costs for registration and type in 2 lines of HTML code into index.html file to redirect.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Beat Buy. Sorry. Forgot the HREF part.
"misspelled domain name names" What's a domain name name?
Youngster. It should be in binary.
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
i dont see anything wrong with what theyre doing. these people have these domains anyway, if google can make an extra million or more with it, then they have plenty of reason to allow domain squaters to use their ad service. these pages would probably exist still without the ads, so who cares.
This new form of advertising is turning into a booming business that some say is cluttering the Internet and could be violating trademark rules. How on earth do you "clutter the internet"? It's not like there is a fixed amount of space. Interestingly enough, gogle.com, gooogle.com, and goolge.com all redirect to Google.
#2: Thanks to you posting on /. to inform everyone about this, some troll will have registered the site to go to goatse.
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
In further news, mathematicians allege The Count is cluttering up the domain of natural numbers.
"It's a travesty, I tell you! One? Two? Three? Where does it all stop? Pretty soon there'll be none left at all!"
The Count recently purchased 9111 and 4040 - "numosquatting" two popular numbers. Numosquatting is a technique of buying numbers near or around more famous numbers, so that people who mistype the intended number get the "numosquatted" number instead.
When asked for comment, The Count said "There are a lot of numbers out there. So many I cannot even count them! Me! Oh, but let me try: one! two! three! four!"
Several hours later, The Count was reached again for comment. "Anyways, the point is that there are a lot of numbers out there. These whiny people wouldn't be happy even if we went over to the Real numbers. I mean, let's say I buy 405, right? They'll say it's 'too close to 404!' - look, there's a whole lot of numbers in between! But no, that's their special number and they can't have anything even infinitely far away from it."
"Look, if they want to make it to where no one can have any number near their special number, they should buy those numbers up too - they're asking for their single-number purchase to be equal to ten, a hundred, a million of mine!" continued The Count, "A hundred million! A billion! Ten billion! One hundred billion!" At which point this reporter's cell phone died.
When asked for rebuttal, the owner of 404 stated "that just, like, your opinion, man."
The sad part is that this made the morning post long before it was slashdotted.
http://www.typosquatting.com/
If I buy a domain name, I can put whatever expressive content I want there. I can put a business site where you make purchases. I can put a business site where I have a list of advertising for other businesses. I can put my horrible beat poetry there if I choose. It is not wasting your time if you mistyped the domain name you wished to go to. In fact, you are wasting my time, because you did not intend to go to my site. And you are the one who wasted your own time: you mistyped the domain name not me. So stop trying to tell me what I can put on my website.
A trademark owner is free to sue any website domain name holder they want to if they believe infringement is taking place. No one is stopping the trademark owner from doing this. In fact, I believe they are obligated to "defend" their mark from similar users who are causing confusion in the marketplace. So, if you mistype a domain name and end up somewhere you did not intend and that somewhere is very similar to a trademark name, you also can blame the trademark owner for not defending their mark. However, you still are the one who mistyped the name. So, I doubt you could get damages.
I wish I could get damages for the people who mistype a bank's phone number and get my house instead. Of course, people never take personal responsibility for the mistakes they make. They want to blame other people.
And they like to read newspaper articles that back up their bias.
File a patent and sue AOL
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
So DNS doesn't help at all. This means we should probably use content based filtering. And I mean probably, I propose: bayesian spam filtering for websites! I havn't got the time to write the plugin for Firefox, but I would be willing to run it. Or, maybe it would be better to write an extension to the squid proxy?
...that the reason they don't allow AdSense on parked domains, is that they have a special ad program for that: http://www.google.com/domainpark/
So you see.. it's not that it's not allowed per se, it's just that they have very specific rules for parked domains, and you'll have to go through -that- program instead of the general AdSense program.
---
Back on topic: I don't see why Google is getting blamed in this. A typosquatter registers a domain, places ads on it (by whoever, in this case: Google), and not the typosquatter but the ad company is at fault? Riiight. The only way anybody could attempt to argue that would be "if ad companies didn't allow it, typosquatting wouldn't be as lucrative, and less typosquatter domains would exist" - except that if Google (and other reputable ad companies) doesn't do it, one of the many porn kings will. If I -am- going to make a typo, I'd rather be hit with google ads than porn ads (which tend to come in the form of popups, popunders, flash overlays) and attempts to install Spyware Flavor X through Z.
As long as typesquatters do not have an really simialr page to the original, or a porn site, I don't see anything wrong with typesquatting at all. How can you call it "cluttering the internet" when no-one sees it except by mistake? Let these typosquatters spend money registering a doamin that almost no-one will see...
I have to believe typosquatting has got less profitable since browsers started trying to complete what you type.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Personally, I've been wondering why Google hasn't taken a bite out of squatters that sit on the obvious name of it's own services. Take a wander over to googlenews.com or googlecalendar.com.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
The WP article is a complete troll. Google does more to help people find sites than any other search engine. Only a person with a crippled browser who also hates Google would try to find any site by typing the name as a URL anymore. Google also helps a lot of small sites earn money. Blaming them for the actions of dishonest people who take advantage of that money is stupid. You might as well blame Google when people defeat their search algorithms by google bombing and all of the terrible content on the internet you might run into by a poorly defined search criteria.
Most browsers have a goolge search bar. Some also have a dictionary.
A google search for "Bist Buy" returns exactly what you would want. The first thing displayed is the official Best Buy site and the second is a warning link, "Did you mean: best buy ," which directs the user to the legitimate site.
It might be nice to embed that kind of service into the browser itself, but it's probably impractical. Google gets the right answer by constantly combing the entire internet and storing information on about half a million computers. Disambiguation is what search engines are all about, so why bother?
Typo-squatters and DNS registrars are to blame for typo-squatting. DNS registrars should be able to do a google search as easily as I did. They might also watch out for abuse. The problem is that some of them are active parts of the problem. They buy and sell names to the highest bidder and steal names when they can. Blaming Google makes about as much sense as blaming any other advertiser or the companies that pay for web advertisements, or the whole internet in the first place.
I've seen this story before and wish it would die. I would not be surprised if it was part of a M$ smear campaign designed to reduce Google's ad revenue and search engine market share. Google's not doing anything wrong and is one of the few advertising companies that does not suck life.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Blaming Google for what other people do hurts Google. The article is a troll.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I think that's only part of the Google annoyances.
Many of the text ad-boxes they provide in their search results, now point to similar sites, which have NO content at all, except google ad-sense ads, based on the search terms you used to get there.
It's a bit like a Google.com infinite loop. You except the ads to be relevant, instead you get a link to more Google ads that should be relevant, but might actually be ANOTHER ad-sense click-through site.
This really is going to be the downfall of Google's much heralded text ads. They haven't shown any interest in fixing it when I contacted them about a few specific instances, so I generally just don't expect Google ads to be worthwile anymore. I think they've given up on their ingenious ad-placement, and are just going for whatever can bring in a few more bucks right now.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Since there is no limit on the prices that URLsquatters can charge those of us who dream one day of having our own URL and/or IPV6 Addy. We have to ask ourselves if what Google is doing will, increase the prices that URLsquatters charge for what they are sitting on, or decrease the prices? Will it increase the number of URLs that are squatted upon; in the hopes that they will one day become profitable sideroads to bannerland? Will it increase the amount of money being brought into the internet community, in much the way that Vonnegut's Mookey Coke signs hoped to entice otherwise thirstless drinkers? My guess is that it will increase the profitability of large squatters, increase number of URLs that are owned for speculative purposes, increase the prices the do or can charge, and entice others into spending more for various reasons. So if you've got it, get some more, and go again. I like playing the race car in monopoly.
1. Put on tin foil cap.
2. Crank paranoia to maximum.
3. Make wild, inacurate claims and leaps of logic that even Evel Knievel would blanch at.
4. Blame Google.
5. Get Zonk to notice.
6. ????
7. Slashdot!
We all have issues with those typo sites that have 80 popups and run annoying javascript. But the regular run of the mill typo site that has a bunch of text/visual ads and looks nothing like the regular site really just provides a service. It takes a lot longer for firefox to determine that the domain can't be looked up than it does to display the typo site and this means I get to correct my mistake even faster.
Some typo sites even link to the real site in which case they are clearly providing a service. Just because they make some money on it doesn't make them evil. I would like it if all typo sites did this but even if they don't they are hardly a bad thing.
Typo squating is the internet equivalent of locating your store next to some high profile high traffic store. Sure, if you put your billboard or store next to walmart because you know lots of people are going to go there you are in some sense profiting from walmart's consumer brand but so what? In the physical world we recognize that it is a benefit to consumers to allow advertisements and stores next to popular stores (that way people have more choices and there is more competition) I don't see any difference in the internet world.
We would all recognize that a company which complained about it's competitors building a store nearby and profiting from their name brand was just being excessive and greedy I don't see any reason to think it is different in the internet world
Also the article (assuming it is the one linked from digg) reads like a fucking yahoo PR release. It lacks any attempt at balance as it doesn't even try to find anyone who doesn't think typo squatting is the internet equivalent of selling babies.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Likeliness of misspelling defined by:
- Ratio of popularity (on Alexa or whatever) of the domain the user typed in and the most likely misspelled version
- "Typographical distance" (a word i just invented, just use a metric that considers most of the popular types of typos, switched letters, neighboring keys etc) of the domain the user typed in to its most likely real spelling
If the likeliness is higher than 99% redirect straight to the real site, if its 50-99% display a question page ("You typed in slahsdot.org. Didn't you want to go to slashdot.org?") if it's below 50% just let the user to go what he typed in. Remember the answers the user gave to the selection page and use it to judge future typos.
Surely this is not a troll! Google's Do No Evil motto is common knowledge!
Oh, the irony in IllegalMonopoly.com.
http://cricket.asimov.net/index.cgi?target=%2Fslas hdot-misspellers%2Fslsahdot-org;ranges=d%3Aw -- from a graph on the misspelling tracker site.
How many slashes would a slashdot dot, if a slashdot could dot slashes?
Unfortunately, the only offering I've seen on this front so far is the Typo-Patrol utility from MS... http://research.microsoft.com/Typo-Patrol/. What I really want, though, is a *server side* option to remove domains from my search results if they meet certain criteria of my choosing. Google personalized has taken a step in this direction, but it falls far short of what's needed IMHO.
Pi Ran Out
The people defending Google here,
Or the ones attacking those pointing out just how 'evil' google's business practices and ethics are.
Yeah, the highschool kiddies are out in force today!
-anon cause you all know the kids will be falling all over themselves to mark this flamebait/troll
As soon as you say that some sites are not allowed as "type-oh" sites, you will prevent anyone who is not a big company from owning a domain name. Don't go there!
Andy Out!
Seriously, this changes the story completely.
Calling this a troll is trolling.
What's annoying is the number of these sites that are ending up indexed in search engines. It's becomming popular for low profit high traffic sites to get either bought out to be turned into a squat site or else the original owners just give up and turn it into the same kind of spam site. It makes it hard for legit users to buy domains they want to put real site's on when every dictionary word, trademarks, obvious combination of words, and typos are all registered to squat sites. It also makes it hard for users to find real sites with real information because often the real sites come up after the squatting sites in search results.
I hope somebody who's a Firefox coder will get it together and create an extension, similar to Adblock, that lets users blacklist sites and keeps you from going to those sites. It'd be best if, again like Adblock, it can share the blacklist between users. Call it the Bad Karma extension or something like that. If possible go beyond and have it grey out results in popular search engines that go to those site's.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
BistBuy.com is down, must have been slashdoted :)
I totally agree that domain squatters - people sitting on a domain that would otrherwise be of use to someone - are evil, and "Something Should Be Done To Stop Them" (tm).
I am only talking about typo squatters. I can't see where these would come up much with search engines as like Google, they mostly suggest the right spelling if you mess it up.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Possibly, it still seems like I'm encounting both more and more in normal searches. Since Google's terms of use for AdSense specify that pages can not be used primarily for providing these links I think they should start shutting down the companies doing this. Some of the biggest offenders are domain registars. Maybe Google should pull GoDaddy's account for example. Prove that they, Google, aren't part of this spammy plot by doing the right thing. Don't be evil. It shouldn't be hard to determine if most of these sites are squatters because they have almost no content on their sites other than links. By eliminating them it will at least force these companies to add some sort of content to keep making their money.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I bet the average slashdot reader has a humorous or annoying whitehouse.com versus whitehouse.gov story they could share with the community. I will start off by saying that I used to be a high school teacher and currently teach elementary school. Oh the stories, I could tell that you can already guess the outcome.
www.whitehouse.gov and www.whitehouse.com
Your turn?
I tried it, but it didn't work for me. Maybe you'll have better luck.
IE7 is supposed to have a similar feature, but I wouldn't trust it.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Come on.. The title and summary make it sound like Google is actually buying these sites and plastering ads all over them. Google can hardly be responsible for what people use their service for. They don't even necessarily know it's a domain/typo squatting page. Don't put this on Google, put it on the people who own and operate the sites. This is google bashing on a laughable level.
If you see spelling or grammatical errors don't blame me. I tried to preview but IE here at work borked the CSS
Slishdot kicked me out for being a trull.
Table-ized A.I.
Is exactly why I tolerate Firefox's crashing (seems to have increased dramatically with 1.5, I noticed).
Google's ads live in the same adblock list as other scumbags such as doubleclick, falkag, and atdmt. Google wants to act like them, they can be treated like them.
Ads are ads, and trying to put cookies with them pisses me off even more.
WOW this is old news. Everyone has known this for over a year now at least, probably even longer still. Typosquatting isn't all though, let's not forget all those annoying sites that have half a million keywords at the bottom of a page or the people who cheat using blogging to increase the pagerank of a site.
I think some of you may be interested to check out Google Watch.
Draw a line in the sand saying this is not who we are, and this is not who we are ever going to be.
-----
"No brains, no headache. Drink accordingly." ----- Me.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
I registered http://gooooooooooooooooooooooogle.com/ my googlead profits have been up 100%!
Surly it's the companies setting up these mistypo-web-sites that are making the money. I guess it's trash google time again
"Google apparently doesn't see cheating its customers out of billions of dollars as doing evil,"
says Brian S Kabateck
davecb5620@gmail.com
What I haven't seen anyone mention is google's ownership of parked domains and google paying itself commissions for clicks.