So this has been in the news today. Verisign, by virtue of their control of the .net and .com domains, is now redirecting all misspelled or non-working .com or .net urls to their own search page. I was curious so I tried typing in lannibarbei.com to see what would happen. Sure enough I got redirected to this url:
http://sitefinder.verisign.com/lpc?u...annibarbei.com
There is a choice of 3 possible similar urls to what I typed in. lannibarbie.com, lannybarbie.com and barbei.com. The first 2 urls are great. The first one we own and the second is owned by Dugmor and redirects to the first. The 3rd URL is a registered misspelling of barbie.com of course. It first pops up a box saying that I am infected with some virus or other and telling me to click yes to download the fix. What the download actually is I have no idea. After closing the box it redirects to USseek.com with a page of listings about (surprise!) barbie dolls.
Underneath the 3 similar urls to what I typed is a fairly small area with directory categories.
So anyway Verisign is being sued by one of the toolbar companies that use their software to redirect such things to their own site. Because verisign controls the dns the toolbar vendor is now shit out of luck. And of course you are no longer going to see the microsoft search page which is the default in IE.
A lot of people seem to be outraged by the whole thing because Verisign is "abusing" their monopoly. Personally I say, So what? The page got me where I wanted to go and it was a hell of a lot more relevant than the stuff that microsft puts up a lot of the time. I guess Verisign is gonna make some good money off of it. If they don't start with the dirty tricks like the guys that registered barbei.com then I say great.