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Microsoft "SiteFinder" Quietly Raking It In
An anonymous reader writes in with the news, which isn't particularly new, that Microsoft's Internet Explorer sends typo domain names to a page of pay-per-click ads. In this endeavor Microsoft joins Charter and Earthlink in profiting from the dubious practice that Verisign pioneered but failed to make stick. The article is on a site whose audience is, among others, those who attempt to profit by typo-squatting, and its tone is just a bit petulant because individuals cannot hope to profit in this game on the scale Microsoft effortlessly achieves.
It's weird, but I don't mind Sitefinder. It's a lot less annoying than the people who set up sites that spawn eight and a half billion popup ads. I suppose Microsoft really can be the lesser of two evils... ... oh, God. I didn't actually say that, did I?
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
Microsoft's Internet Explorer sends typo domain names to a page of pay-per-click ads
Typ0wned!
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
It took me long to come here and post this since I was searching for slahsdot.org on IE..
Rakes in millions (billions?) from shady parked domain farms that run AdWords.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Did Verisign pioneer it? I seem to recall that Microsoft's "feature" came before Verisign tried to do it universally.
I wonder if this might be something the Firefox side of the house could use. Rake in additional cash for the Mozilla foundation and help users. Given the relationship they already seem to have with Google, I doubt this would prove too much of a problem.
Of course, an option should be available for users who do not wish to use the service.
Yes, I am a smart ass; it's better than the alternative.
SiteFinder broke DNS for the purpose of making money. This is just a 'feature' similar to the one in Firefox that automatically performs a google search on things you enter into the URL bar if they aren't valid addresses; MS is just taking the idea further (and making money off it, because they love money). I can see people being miffed by the fact that there are ads on the search page, but it's not as if Google doesn't have ads on their search pages.
This is basically just a bunch of advertisers and domain squatters getting upset because Microsoft and Google are making money and they aren't.
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
I mean, other companies like, say, Google would NEVER display ads on a search result page, and directing the user to a search page if they mistype a URL is such an annoying idea. (And I'm sure MS would never let you change which search engine these results go to.)
OMG M$ TEH EV1L!
Going to http://www.lexus-financail.com/ site in IE 7 with no default search engine yields
So if you want to make untold millions as well, build (a) search engine and (b) popular web browser, and make (a) the default in (b).
Well if you're gonna do the wrong thing, you at least might as well do it the right way.
Verisign literally broke DNS in their attempt. This cash grab is confined to software that can easily be switched from.
--
The last digit of pi is four.
All IE7 does is go to the search page OF YOUR CHOICE if you misspell something. I have IE7 configured with Google as my default search engine, and when I type in lexus-financail.com I go to Google's search page, which I find is a very helpful feature.
Sheesh, it's like people don't even TRY with the FUD anymore.
Have google set as my default search engine and it took me to http://www.google.com/search?q=lexus-financail.com . Thats without the http:/// part, as per the article. If I put the http:/// part, it gives me a 'Cannot find server or DNS Error' error page.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
I tried what the article said to do. I have Google set as my default IE search engine. It just did a Google search for the incorrect domain. This seems like a feature (albeit one that I dislike) rather than some money grabbing scam.
Come on, if we want to bash MS, and especially IE, we can do much better than this.
The Sitefinder you mention is nothing of the sort. What you are experiencing is IE7's auto-search feature. If you set your default search to Google, you'll get google search results with the same thing as IE.
Here is the first page from the blog, with me typing in the same search as the blog does.
Now here is what I get after I hit enter.
Meet new people, and kill them.
is actively testing it. From their perspective, it's free money.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
the whole domain system is fucked. look at the absurd pricing of the domains.. yes 9.99 a year is EXPENSIVE.. if you aren't a millionaire with some nice program that grabs peoples domains you are basically fucked. (unless you are using Linux wget, lets hope that source code is int tainted and phoning home somewhere) anyhow, another total fucking scheme is the domain watcher services that godaddy and other domain registrars have. You basically sign up and they monitor whether or not a domain is going to expire soon. Well they are buying up EVERYTHING anyone signs up and monitors. It's basically free money, which is the domain system. Verisign has complete controll still, and everything smells of fraud from the top down. why can't anything be done honestly? human nature blows..
This article is stupid. It's just takes you to the default search engine (which is usually Microsoft), and offers you a spelling correction, which then performs the search. THEN it shows you the search results, which has -- ADS. OH MY GOD!!
In other news, typing the same string into Google (or any other search engine) also shows search results -- WITH ADS.
Man, I've really busted the conspiracy WIDE ASS OPEN.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
When I type in their mis-spelled domain name into IE6's address bar, I don't get the advertising page they say I should. All I get is the page from IE saying the hostname couldn't be resolved.
I think the article is conflating two things: manipulation of the DNS network to return actual A records for domains that don't exist vs. IE redirecting any request that yields a DNS error to a pre-configured page. The first breaks all uses of names, the second only breaks IE. The first is a fatal problem because it affects software that doesn't have a human being to interpret the data, may not be able to handle contact with arbitrary hosts and may easily depend on getting accurate "record does not exist" answers from DNS. The second is merely a major annoyance because there's usually a human being sitting there to see the page, get annoyed and fix the configuration so that doesn't happen again.
type in the wrong domain and you get an error page. Microsoft offers likely candidates to what you're searching for. A few times I've typed in invalid domains within IE, and MS came up with a link that was correct. Firefox gives you a "Try Again". Yeah... MS is so fucking evil for making a few pennies for making my life easier.
Really, I think this is a "non-issue". You're not locked in to Live.com or any other search site. Microsoft "makes" Internet Explorer, why wouldn't they set the default to Live.com? Why shouldn't they? You can always change it...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
FireFox has its default page set to Google. Wonder how much that rakes in for Google (and Mozilla)? Come on folks, good for the goose and all...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Yep, I second that, on my DELL provided machine, the default search engine is DELL branded Google, and it is providing the paid ads from Google on the search.
I have to agree with whomever said that this is nowhere near as bad as SiteFinder - you have full control over this and it does not break DNS service. Besides, what do I care, I stopped using IE years ago.:-)
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
Searching from the address bar is an option in IE7, as it was in IE6 and others before. If you dont like this behavior (regardless of your search engine), just turn it off!
The user still has a little bit of control with this part, unlike Verisigns' overdone version. (for once. Nice of them, innit)
Marked as lame.
Inaccurate, and not to mention this kind of thing is listed as a feature of OpenDNS...
I highly recommend OpenDNS, available for free at http://www.opendns.com./ They also redirect your typos to a search page, but you can brand the pages with your own logos. They provide many other useful services such as phishing site blocking and DNS usage statistics. You don't even need an account to use their DNS servers, if you don't want the statistics and custom settings.
/24 networks registered with them now, and I can't thank them enough. I have zero DNS problems now, and it even seems much faster.
I have 7
==========
Intelligence should not be rewarded; ignorance should be punished
==========
Firefox makes money off of it too. Google pays Fire Fox a lot of money for those searches.
This is, indeed, a crucial distinction, which makes Microsoft's practice benign compared to the evil of SiteFinder.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Watch for chairs. This is like the Sitefinder hackery, only much worse - its built into the app you're using. Rather than you choosing to use Google or some MS engine, MS has built your browser (and face it, IE _is_ the Intarweb for most people) to automatically use ITS search engine.
As far as the poor IE7 saps know, Microsoft IS Google.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
This is just a 'feature' similar to the one in Firefox that automatically performs a google search on things you enter into the URL bar if they aren't valid addresses
That's not true. If it actually looks like an address to Firefox (i.e. it has a period in it and no spaces), then you get a "Server not found" page with the "Try Again" button. The important thing (to me, at least) is that Firefox leaves the url alone when this happens, so you can just correct your mistake and hit enter. IE makes you delete the long address they put in there and start over.
In the absence of an MX record e-mail gets delivered to the A record — MX records are optional. If none is found, the request is made for the A-record, and that gets used instead.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
If the browser developers don't need the money, there are enough good causes to contribute to. Being a browser-only thing (unlike SiteFinder, which messed up DNS for all programs, including e-mail), this is not evil — so just do it!..
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
So, just to be clear, you have no problem with the forwarding to a search page. Your only issue is that the old URL gets removed from the address bar? That sounds like a UI fix that would take a novice programmer 2 hours to fix and test.
Register Lexus-Financail.com, make it another http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/ and send 2% to me for the idea :) Thanks.
No it doesn't, it gives you the original address you typed in the search field so you can just correct it and hit search or copy and paste it back into your address bar. The Try Again approach is nicer in my opinion but it doesn't make it harder to see what address you entered to begin with.
Try typing Lexus-Financial.com into Google...
Apart from getting the two results that link back to this specific story, at the bottom, on big letters, you get Did you mean to search for: Lexus-Financial.com
This is just straight MS bashing for no reason - chances are that if you typo'd, you'd probably be looking for the suggested alternate. If you typed the same stuff into Google and spelt it correctly, chances are your first link would be a sponsored one at the top.
I mean, if a search engine helps you fidn what your looking for, it's doing its job. if it makes money while it's doing it, so what?
Good! I hope Microsoft keeps this up.
Firefox searches for you while Microsoft dumps you on an advertisement. Which do you think the consumer appreciates more?
This is short term cash for long term losses.
Compared to leaving it in the address like Firefox does, IE's practice of forcing me to copy and paste it back from the search field is incredibly (and needlessly!) annoying.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
...not nearly as bad as what Verisign did. The reason Sitefinder was dangerous is because it has the potential to break things. If an internet-based program relies on a valid server not found error it will break if it gets a ad page redirect. Granted, that would be unusual, but that's not the point. It's been that way since day one. If it's not broken...
Don't you mean: TyPwned
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Five years from now he's going to kick himself, if he hasn't already. He surrendered his domain name to Microsoft for what, an Xbox and a trip to Redmond, when he could've been cashing on people's typos on 24x7x365 basis the same way Microsoft and others do.
And he had ironclad rights to the url, too.
I'm a Charter customer/victim, and the first thing I did upon discovering the new "feature" was disable it. Of course, it's not that easy. Disabling Charter's site-finder bullshit just replaces it with Microsoft's site-finder bullshit, because that's Internet Explorer's default, and apparently they thought that nobody would notice. I notice because I'm using Safari on a Mac, and Windows Live search sure as hell isn't the default behavior for me. "Disable" is supposed to mean "stop doing that", not "do it differently and pretend you've stopped."
k tards
The way I see it, if they want to intercept any of my failed DNS queries, they can have them. All of them:
sudo ping -f charter.please.stop.breaking.the.internet.you.coc
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
Well, CUSTOMERS would know the difference, consumer sheep probably wont know any better. Is this a surprise that M$ profits from the ignorant?
Cheers
* Carthago Delenda Est *
As I recall, Microsoft was already doing this back when Verisign put SiteFinder in place. Maybe it wasn't loaded with ads at the time, but they were redirecting unresolvable domains to MSN search or something. It was widely held up as the right way to do it -- in the one application for which it was, well, applicable -- rather than SiteFinder's wrong way, which changed the response for every single network application, including those that relied on the previous specified behavior.
They stole this feature from Firefox! How dare they!
Seriously, since when is defaulting to a -chosen- search engine being monopolistic? I mean, technically, AOL sent you to AOL's search page whether you liked it or not.
There are plenty more things to be critical of MS then this, don't waste perfectly good flame time on silly things.
"This is just a 'feature' similar to the one in Firefox that automatically performs a google search on things you enter into the URL bar if they aren't valid addresses" No, No. Firefox will ony get you there if you enter the (usually) correct name, otherwise it does not land you on a "google" or "mozilla" page with ppc ads. One one side you have a service which is useful and Spam, on the other side you have just a useful service.
Compared to leaving it in the address like Firefox does, IE's practice of forcing me to copy and paste it back from the search field is incredibly (and needlessly!) annoying.
Tools -> options -> Advanced -> Scroll down to "Search from Address Bar" -> [*] "Do not search from addressbar"
Do you Gentoo!?
I type "Lexus-Financail.com" into my address bar and IE automatically routes it to a Google search that suggests Lexus-Financial.com. Whenever IE doesn't find a server that you type in the address bar, it redirects to a search using your default search hooks. Mine are set to Google and it uses Google to search. If IE just showed a blank "Server not found" page it wouldn't be broken, but it could easily be argued that using your default search provider to try and find your intended server (in event of a "not found") is useful behavior.
At the end of the day, this isn't "evil" behavior. They aren't preventing people from accessing a legitimate site, they are providing relevant search results instead of a generic error screen. They may garner some ad revenue in the process but they haven't programmed the browser in a way that they are the only ones who could benefit from the behavior. And unless the user is paying their ISP per-bit at an extremely expensive rate, there's no monetary damage to the user.
News for nerds, stuff that matters?
IE and other browsers have had a "search from the address bar" feature for a long time. And it's user-configurable.
So this isn't news and it doesn't matter.
Changing the default search engine to Google only fixes part of the problem of the address bar. Unlike Firefox or earlier IE incarnations, the text field won't assume "http://" if you type a URL. Instead it initiates a search, using the default engine. Pity those of us who are used to entering URLs by keyboard... sad, retro-grouches that we are...
They are using the 404 response correctly, this is what it was designed for! IE is trying to do something intellligent when it knows that the page is missing. What verisign did was fool every program (including IE) into thinking *all* pages exist, which breaks anything that wants to respond in a useful way to the page being mistyped.
I checked on a Windows machine, and they even let you change it! Didn't even bury it too deep in the configuration! You can go to google or bash-microsoft.net and thus the mistyped domains probably can hurt them!
Microsoft does plenty of evil and stupid things, but this is not amoung them.
sheesh, what are you people, idiots?
...accurately.
End of problem.
All IE7 does is go to the search page OF YOUR CHOICE if you misspell something. I have IE7 configured with Google as my default search engine ...
Who cares if you can change your settings, this is just another sleazy way for M$ to sell eyeballs. The authors are angry because M$ both decries typo-squatting and practices it. The net result of their defaults is to violate the tradmarks of other companies by typo squatting, how's that for IP respect? Hypocrisy and sleaze are nothing new in Redmond. Nor are changes in defaults. I'm sure your next Windoze update will obliterate your defaults. They would not want all of the ppc revenue going to Google now would they? Of course it won't because the vast majority of Windoze users who use IE will just accept anything and everything M$ shovels at them until they finally give up computers all together.
An honest browser reports your error, "An error occurred while loading http://poopydoo.com/ Unknown host poopydoo.com." This prompts users to look again or maybee to use their Google bar with a reasonably worded search. Users confounded by a pile of advertisements are going to be confused more than anything else. IE7 is not an honest browser because M$ is not an honest company.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Funny, if I replace that "M$" with Google re Firefox, it seems to fit the same mould.
Diddums for them. The authors are typo-squatters. You'll forgive me if I really couldn't give a fuck if they're angry. Guess who else decries and profits from typo-squatting? Google.
Like when my Firefox start page went from mozilla.com to google.com, you mean?
You can be as sure as you like. Don't make it true, though, twitter. Fnnily enough, you can even update the entire Windows OS without losing browser defaults. FUD.
Your sockpuppet account is about the only account that carries less credibility in this place than your 'real' account, twitter.
Funny, if I replace that "M$" with Google re Firefox, it seems to fit the same mould. ... Like when my Firefox start page went from mozilla.com to google.com, you mean?
My homepage has never been changed by any gnu/linux distribution. I can't tell you what happens on Windoze.
When I make a typo in Konqueror I get the error message quoted before. Firefox gives the following:
That is not a typo squat or selling of eyeballs, it's honest reporting of an error.
Enjoy your favorite OS, it's enjoying you.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I don't know where you get your info but my default installations of Firefox never bring up Google.....
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
Could you be any more misinformed. MSIE drops any nonexistent addresses (assuming you didn't configure it not to) into your default search engine. That can be Live, Google, Yahoo, Altavista, Ask.com, Baidu, even Dogpile if you're crazy. If you prefix it with "http://", then IE will NOT search for you, it will bail with "Cannot find server". There is no money for Microsoft if you a) set a different search engine as your default, b) disable searching from the address bar in Internet Options or c) enter in an address that CLEARLY is a domain name (i.e. has a protocol prefix) but is not correct
Oh, and the consumer likely appreciates Microsoft's approach more. Stop spreading idiocy.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
If you do a fresh install of a >=2.0 version this happens. It doesn't happen on upgraded versions.
Whatever you've been smoking, stop. You don't have enough brain cells left to kill.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
I'm not a mod but I wish I was. This is exactly the point I want to make. If you change the default search you go somewhere else. In IE 7 this is fairly easy (choose "Find other search providers" from the drop down next to the search box) and google and a number of other search engines are available to be set as the default search engine with only a couple clicks.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
not using m$ "products" resolves them COMPLETELY. they thief everything they can(not only IP).. so talking about TRUST them ... pfff....
forget !!
I call FUD!
> SiteFinder broke DNS for the purpose of making money.
Broke DNS? You're kidding, right? DNS works exactly how it is supposed to. The application simply handles NXDOMAIN responses from DNS how they want to. You can disable the behavior. This may be another reason to not use IE, but it is not even in the same league as what Verisign did - which changed how DNS worked.
There are many comparisons here by Microsoft apologists to .. firefox defaulting to a google search which yeilds some PPV ads, and then yelling 'See - Those OSS guys are just as bad, Whats the Difference ?'
.. the question is, as a user .. are the tools that I am using doing _something_ on the internet that ends up benefitting the provider of those tools.
... right ? .. and lets just ignore the fact that the driver in the second case also happens to have a record of accidentally benefitting from the deaths of so many other ex-spouses, but lets not allow facts to cloud our judgements here please.
...
Well - the difference is : This is a Microsoft OS that bundles in a Microsoft client browser redirecting a user's request to a Microsoft hosted site which includes PPV ads which end up paying money back to Microsoft.
Cant you see the difference here ?
This is one of the dangers of allowing ONE company to control the whole stack.
If someone clicks through a Google advert, then sure, Google makes money just like MS makes money from its adverts.
The question is not 'Does someone recieve a benefit when a PPV ad is clicked on'
And it is not like Google is in control of either the browser or OS that generates those incoming clicks, and so Google cannot be accused of manipulating the session.
Its the (very subtle) difference between driving a car and accidentally running someone over VS driving a car and accidentally running over your insured spouse. Either way you look at it, its just an accident
If on the other hand, you totally believe everything MS says, and totally trust everything they do, then good luck to you
Oh, I don't bother with that -- I just use Firefox instead.
Incidentally, that still doesn't match the functionality of Firefox, since you lose the ability to search from the address bar. The only way to really fix it would be to not have a URL for the error "page."
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I noticed the author of the linked-to article did not extend his logic to bad host names within a registered domain. I presume MS's LiveSearch intercepts those as well; so doesn't his original logic, which he talked himself out of, apply (trademark theft)?
.COM and .NET.
Verisign's Sitefinder didn't intercept bad host names within registered domains; only unknown TLD's in
Charter's DNS hack always returns an A record regardless of upstream MXDOMAIN failures.
Disclaimer: I absolutely *hate* what Verizon did/is doing.
That said, you're assuming that they're also running a mail server on the same machine as the webserver. If you have more than 4 clients you "want" to separate mail from http.
I'm pretty sure your mail would bounce if no connection can be made to port 25.
Just my thoughts...
Open DNS -- well, one word and one acronym. Maybe just a URL. http://www.opendns.com/
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
It's really not as bad as described. If you do mistype a domain name in Internet Explorer all it does is a search for it in the _default_ search engine. This of course happens to be Live search, but the default can easily be changed. Thus, since my default search engine in IE is Google (surprise!), mistyping a domain name takes me too Google search, which by the way also contains PPC ads.
As was explained before, when we were all worked up about the SiteFinder itself, the mere existence of a DNS record can be a decisive factor in a number of applications.
For example, an anti-spam filter can lookup the domain of the (alleged) sender to weed out some spams. Servers using SiteFinder's "DNS" would then validate bogus domains, because SiteFinder never said "NXDOMAIN"...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I have to agree with the parent. More than likely, people appreciate Microsoft's "help".
The real losers here are the domain squatters like pool.com
- I voted for Nintendo and against Bush
If I enter into a boxing heavyweight match and do well, I may get likened to Hollyfield. When Evander Hollyfield gets into a boxing ring, he isn't likened to me.
I thought Rush, the musicians, were fat tards! I could be out of touch though, when I bought "Never mind the Bollocks" it burnt all my elf-rock albums...
need a free COBOL editor for Windows?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm an earthlink customer and when I mistype something it sends me to an eartlink page that suggests one or two site URL's one of which is almost always the right one. The page itself has no ads on it.
That said, you're assuming that they're also running a mail server on the same machine as the webserver. [...] I'm pretty sure your mail would bounce if no connection can be made to port 25.
Yes, but usually only after the relay server has spent a week trying it, in case the server has a temporary problem that's going to be fixed.
Oh, I don't bother with that -- I just use Firefox instead.
Incidentally, that still doesn't match the functionality of Firefox, since you lose the ability to search from the address bar. The only way to really fix it would be to not have a URL for the error "page."
In IE7 there is a search bar right next to the addressbar. But that said, I don't bother with searching from either, I just goto google and type in my search. Same on Firefox.
(BTW: I use firefox as well)
Do you Gentoo!?
.. those shady domain-squatters are now finding their flawed business model of profiteering from other's work has been broken by the advent of new technology.
Should we expect another flood of lawsuits to browser users..........?
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Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
The article likens the IE behavior to typosquatting, but I would disagree. Domain names are cheap, and if you own one and want to avoid letting MS make (as much) money off of your users typos, you could just register the typo domains - problem solved. Unlike actual typosquatters, taking back your $$ from MS doesn't require an appeal - just a quick trip to the domain registrar.
That, and as others have said SiteFinder is actually useful and less annoying than the site you might otherwise end up at.
Google pays for the searches via the search bar. I'm not convinced they pay for the ones coming from the location bar. Last I checked, the two did different searches, and one of them didn't advertise itself as coming from Firefox.
Showing a pageful of ads is not a service.
When did that feature get coded? Was it when Google agreed to pay Mozilla all sorts of money for toolbar searches?
There is NOT ONE Act of Terror, that committed by the State of Israel. Not ONE. So — bugger off.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I challenge you to name TWO Acts of Terror, for which Israel (not pre-Israel Zionists of 60 years ago) is responsible. FYI, "terrorism" is defined as: terrorism, act of terrorism, terrorist act -- (the calculated use of violence (or threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear)
You are equating the sides, which is a sign of a very short attention span... They are not equal, and — however elitist it sounds — Israel is far better. Inhumanely so...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.