Google Battles Domain-Name Tasting
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Google says it will work to make it less lucrative to tie up millions of Internet addresses using a loophole in a practice known as domain-name tasting. It plans to keep those domain names from legitimate individuals and businesses.
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A civil suit filed in Florida by Dell and its Alienware subsidiary is giving insight into the enormous sums of money that can be made by creating Web pages full of advertising links.In October, Dell sued a group of domain registrars, alleging the companies bought more than 1,100 domain names with trademark-infringing characteristics, such as &quot;dellbatterrogram.com&quot; in order to put advertising links on the pages.The practice, known as&#160;typosquatting, is illegal. It&#39;s intended to draw unwitting Web surfers to pages with URLs (uniform resource locators) that are similar to legitimate sites, and then redirect them to other sites. The owners of these Web sites get revenue from advertising referral programs every time a link is clicked.The defendants -- Belgiumdomains, Capitoldomains, Domaindoorman, Netrian Ventures, iHoldings.com, Juan Pablo Vazquez, and 10 unnamed defendants -- deny the claims. Dell contends the businesses, most of which are registered outside the U.S., are shell companies engaged in collusion.Dell sought a court order in November to freeze their assets so the money from their operations wouldn&#39;t disappear. Last month, the court amended the freeze order, and contained in the details of the new order are clues to just how much money the defendants may be raking in.Google, whose AdSense advertising-placement program was used to monetize the domains, was ordered to hold in a special account the first $1 million collected on behalf of the defendants each month. The second $1 million that accrues in the account every month will be given to the defendants. If more than $2 million accrues in one month, the money is split between the defendants and the Google account.Google takes a cut of AdSense revenue, which shows that it in part benefits from this kind of abuse of the Internet. However, Google recently announced it will not allow AdSense campaigns on &quot;kited&quot; domains.Kiting is a technique used by some rogue registrars to avoid having to pay the fee for using a domain. The domain is repeatedly registered and unregistered within a five-day Add-Grace Period. The grace period, which applies to a handful of TLDs (Top Level Domains) was intended to let people get a refund of their domain registration fee if they made a spelling mistake.Kiting often goes hand in hand with another abusive practice, &quot;domain tasting.&quot; A domain name is registered and monitored during the grace period to see if it gets sufficient traffic to pay for its registration fee. The domain owners then get refunds on the sites with low traffic. However, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers&#160;(ICANN) is considering keeping a $0.20 fee&#160;it normally refunds as part of the registration process in order to stop tasting.Dell has accused the typosquatter defendants in its lawsuit of both practices and is claiming their profits as well as $100,000 per infringing domain used.Google&#39;s antikiting policy doesn&#39;t apply to domain tasting, meaning the company will still potentially benefit from Web sites intended merely for advertising. A Google spokesman said Tuesday, however, that Web sites are supposed to have legitimate content in order to be accepted into AdSense.Other information in the court documents shed light on the economics of monetizing domain names. Dell contends the defendants control some 1 million domain names, and believes they also have used at least 64 million other unique domain names.When the court froze the defendants&#39; assets in November, it also froze their ability to stop renewing domain names that weren&#39;t producing enough revenue to justify the registration fees. Since the defendants controlled so many domain names, the automatic renewal of those names -- likely around 3,000 domains a day -- cost them $20,000 per day.However, the defendants successfully petitioned the court to cancel domains that were generating less than $8 a year in revenue.&quot;These [figures] tell us that there&#39;s lots of money in tasting, and it&#39;s a game of huge volume,&quot; wrote John Levine, a consultant and author of &quot;The Internet for Dummies&quot; on his blog.The Dell case continues in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.&#160;
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A spat that erupted this week between eBay and Google over dueling celebrations might presage more tension in one of the Internet's budding rivalries.
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Internet users may soon see two new domain name suffixes in their browser window: ".post" to identify the postal community and ".travel" for travel industry associations and organizations.
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SEO firms debate how to best target traffic-driving sites like Digg, MySpace, and Technorati.
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By Haley Edwards, Seattle Times  Jun. 3--So, you're getting hitched, you say?   In addition to picking out a cake, flowers, dresses, centerpieces and all the rest, you'd better reserve a domain name.
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Google gets into the Web registration business.
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Plus: Google apps for your site, and HP's pretexting debacle.
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Is Microsoft-served ads slowing down Web sites? Plus, what is Ask erasing, and what are the others keeping? And a 'Knight Rider' comeback and more.
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Operators of the ".travel" domain name are proposing a new search service to help guide people who mistype Web addresses or seek nonexistent ones, reviving a debate over how much control such organizations should have in directing Internet traffic.
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A9.com is walking a fine line between working with Google and competing against it. By Thomas Claburn. Following an April test, A9.
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The Internet registrar is being criticized for its practice of putting holds on domain names that searchers on its site may not look for but not immediately register, although it since has backed down.
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(InfoWorld) - Google announced on Thursday evening that a domain name search and registration service will be added to its Google Apps for Your Domain offering. Google will partner with GoDaddy and eNom, two domain registration companies to offer the service. Registration fees are a nominal $10 per year, which will include private registration to protect personal information and will support .com, .org, .net, .biz, and .info domains. Besides search and registration, the service also includes the creation of an administrative account for managing the site and a configurator to ensure the Google Apps are immediately available on the new site. Google Apps for Your Domain includes Gmail, calendar, shared calendaring, Google Talk instant messaging, Google Page Creator, and the Start Page for creating a home page. The domain name service is available now.
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OK - I actually like and enjoy LDAP, but do not allow that to cloud your judgment. LDAP took much more of my time and effort to learn than Bind and/or DNS. And I recall sitting in front of DNS chapters wondering why we needed another language to do something as easy as mapping a friendly name to an IP address. This jargon stuff has value though such as constraing insomnia.
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The company that controls domain names ending in .name charges for registration details that are publicly available for other top level domains. Security researchers charge the policy will create a haven for hackers.
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The Clinton campaign comes up with a new line of attack on opponent Barack Obama, and the first step is to register the right domain names.
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Over the past few years, the Internet has seen new domain names such as '.eu' for Europe and '.travel' for the travel industry.Comment