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.'"

Comments

Do no evil

[WildStream]

Does it still apply?

WP article has antigoogle bias

[mapkinase]

I have skimmed through the article and "bias" is written in red:

The Post, using a software tool created by the Microsoft Research division, found hundreds of active Web sites showing Google ads at addresses that appear to be misspelled variations of well-known company names, known as "typo-domains." Their owners are known as "typosquatters."

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.