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Yahoo Sued for Spyware, Typosquatting-Based Ads
An anonymous reader writes to mention a Yahoo! suit involving allegations of spyware and typosquatting-based ads. From the article: "The suit claims that Yahoo displayed these advertisers' online ads via spyware and adware products and on so-called 'typosquatter' Web sites that capitalize on misspellings of popular trademarks or company names. Potentially more explosive is the plaintiff's claim that Yahoo regularly uses its relationship with adware and typosquatting sites to gin up extra revenue around earnings time, alleging that the company is conspiring to boost revenue by partnering with some of the Internet's seamier characters."
Of course, I quit using Yahoo when I started using only Google. Yahoo's website went from being the cleanest and least laden with trickery and pervasive ads to one of the worst.
Google ads at least are text and off to the side. Whether or not they are promoting typosquatting or not they are easy to ignore.
Corporatism != Free Market
Ben Edelman has a breakdown on how Yahoo fund spyware
this is just the tip of the iceberg, Google, Ask Jeeves, MySpace, MyWay,iWon, the list of million dollar companies built from and profiting from these seedy practices goes on, its about time somebody gets the smackdown either in court or via other methods
This apparently isn't about consumers: the plaintiffs are a bunch of pissed off advertisers, who would prefer to interfere with your search results rather than with some parked and forgotten domain. The plaintiffs also refuse to name themselves and use terms like "improper advertising displays" (like advertising speech could somehow be "improper".)
They do have a point. Do you want me to tell you why?
.com or .whatever in their name? Why not filter these searches out?
Lots and lots of typosquatters use Overture's Keyword Selector tool to find the juiciest domains. Try it yourself, try searching for "fool.com" without the quotes, and you'll be able to see the number of people who searched for that domain using one of Yahoo's search bars. This gives you a hint that there are many people who would be typing that domain in the address bar, so if nobody registered it, then the typosquatter goes ahead and registers the domain to make lots and lots of money from ADs.
Now, please remind me, why on earth would Yahoo leave the opportunity to search for keywords that have
People need to get over the fact the internet is brought to you by companies who are paying huge sums of cash to put their product in front of you and they will find any and every way to get you to see them. This is the big lie. Take a look at a decent history of the Internet, and you'll see that Internet is NOT "brought to you by companies paying huge sums of money to put their product in front of you.." Those companies saw a tool for satisfying their rapacious greed using a publicly funded utility and have since been trying to turn that utility into their own private playground. And they'll probably succeed, since our public officials are almost all whores. We'll remember a brief, shining moment when some kid with a computer and list of html codes could get a message out to hundreds of millions of people. We'll remember a day when an outfit like slashdot could have an idea and be on an even playing field with Microsoft and Sony (at least in the arena of online media). We've got at most another 2 years of a free and open internet before it becomes little more than another television. There might still be some sort of third-tier "public-access" internet, but it'll be slower, harder to get and less powerful. And we'll probably only get that as part of a bigger package, including the new "AT&T brings you the Internet!"
You are welcome on my lawn.