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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.'"
Typosquatter site BistBuy.com reports record profits and an all-time high hit count.
Huh?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
This quote from the article might help:
This form of online advertising relies on "type-in traffic," the users who type the information they're looking for directly into the address bar of the Web browser instead of using a search engine to scour the Web. Industry analysts estimate that roughly 15 percent of all Web traffic originates this way.
Actually I don't see the big deal. This is nothing new.
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.
No, it's not news it's a Microsoft plant. Google was the last one to get into this game and nowhere near the leader. Nice try, asshats.
Need Mercedes parts ?
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.
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/
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.
Actually I don't see the big deal. This is nothing new.
Just the same, I'm going to register a complaint with the Netter Nusiness Nureau.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
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.
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 ;)
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.
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?
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.
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Incite and flee.
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?
The likelihood of someone typing bastbuy.com is far lower than someone typing brstbuy.com (based on key positions); so it's no wonder that brstbuy.com is owned by bestbuy.com!
Browsing with classic discussion, noscript, at -1 and nested
no hidden comments and I only mod UP
it's down
Must be the slashdor effect.
Shouldn't you be doing something useful?
#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."
http://www.typosquatting.com/
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