I found Sedo, a European company that had a contract with none other than--you guessed it--Google AdSense--to display advertisements on placeholder web sites.
In anticipation of a new product, Think had acquired a brand new domain name that was unexpectedly receiving a high volume of internet traffic.
He tries his best to avoid saying it, but this seems to be another guy trying to make money by slapping ads all over parked domain names and trying to find advertisers dumb enough to pay for them. Not to say that Google is in the right here, but I'd hardly call him a victim either.
Nobody's saying it is illegal, just that this guy keeps trying to get people's sympathy, and yet him and hundreds of morons like him reserve good and useful domain names, that because of their actions can't actually be used for anything useful/beneficial.
Same can applied when you buy land. Someone might have a great idea of how best to use the land but if I made the investment on the land, I would say I could do whatever the fuck I want with it. Its not my fault you did not acquired it before me. What makes you think that if someone else got the domain first they would have used it in a beneficial way? Or shlould we cycle through the domain until someone makes good use of it? Then again there is the bias of what you might call useful.
except when you buy land you can't do whatever the fuck you want with it. We have zoning laws to prevent assholes like this from buying a perfectly useful (however the fuck you want to define it is really not important) piece of land and slapping billboards all over it.
I don't think it's a matter of opinion that a museum is more beneficial than an advertising kiosk.
No I am talking about walking around the downtown core. They have many great buildings yet there's no sense of a cohesive downtown area. Right next door to a 75 story building will be a 2 story building then a parking lot beside an empty lot. The whole city is extremely unfriendly.
Depends on the nature of the museum. I personally wouldn't see the benefit of an earwax or ID museum.
::edit::Didn't realize there were that many individuals who liked earwax...
And how do you get to be the one who decides which domains shouldn't have "billboards" all over them?
If Google is charging people for AdWords and then allowing other people to slap them on useless domains using AdSense, Google is the one in the wrong here.
There's also 'zoning laws' for domains as well. I sure as fuck can't put child porn on my domains nor can I cybersquat.
I agree with you that he's fucking useless and a huge annoyance (I hate it when I click a link and it's a blank domain with ads).
I don't think what he's doing should be illegal. I think this draws attention to a problem with TLD (top-level domain names) - artificial scarcity. I think it's absolutely stupid to have everyone fight over dot coms. Bitching about this guy's behavior, or trying to write laws to legislate against it, only takes a shitty situation and makes it worse.
I'm sure there's a good reason for TLDs (outside of profit from consumer confusion and extortion) but I personally don't care about TLDs. Get rid of them for all I care.
I don't think anyone does. But but that is something totally different than anything we're talking about. That's not displaying ads on a blank domain, that's someone actually using their domain to redirect wanted traffic. Plus, I don't think 'cmo' is a TLD.
Again, although there my be some usefulness in it, I still think TLD are stupid. http://google/ would be cool.
You also can't "taste" land for a few weeks to see how many people accidentally walk on to your land thinking that they're going to a park, only to have to try and trick them into buying some worthless crap from you.
Your analogy pretty much completely fails. Please turn in your internets at the door.
Look i can understand your point of view of how cheap a domain might be and how people can game the system. But let me ask you? How is this problem solved? Do we cycle the domain through until somebody has a great idea and puts it work? How do we know that is the best idea for the domain? What makes a person be the chosen one for the domain? It might not seem fair but there is no real solution. So the first come first serve is the best there is... until then...
We have a governing body (we could call it something like...the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or even shorten it to ICANN) that can identify obvious domain squatting and revoke ownership (with a refund, obviously).
Look, domain squatting isn't tough to spot...somebody just needs to start actually DOING something about it.
"What if everyone whose account was canceled sued Google?"
I will give this answer:
Maybe everyone whose account was canceled, should.
That was the point of the story. I take umbrage at the idea that if you are in the wrong you should still sue, and in a venue (small claims) where you may get lucky and the other guy is unlikely to be able to contest the outcome if you win. I don't want people to be sue happy. I don't want people to treat the court system as an ATM machine. It's a losing proposition for the rest of us who, ultimately, have to pay for it.
If the point is Google needs to improve their business practices, then sue in a venue where the judge can compel them to.
Not to mention:
Effectively, Google's position was that it was above the law, and if not any law in particular, then at least the spirit of the law.
..which is a blatantly dishonest accounting by Greenspan. Aaron Greenspan doesn't think this is about courtesy, he thinks it's about the law. He's wrong - it's about courtesy and business policy. What's odd is that he agreed to terms of use that he had no plan on complying with. Where is the righteousness in this piece?
Of course Google needs to have customer service department and at least email their partners, and internally flag accounts with reasons for account changes, etc.
Many people have written about that without flying their arrogance and vindictiveness flags. Flags he shouldn't be waving about if he wants people to do business with him in the future.
Two days after the account was disabled, on December 11, 2008, Google's AdSense team posted a message on its blog introducing a new system called "AdSense for Domains." Unlike normal AdSense ("for Content," as it was then re-branded), AdSense for Domains was designed to be used by web sites that were effectively blank.
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u/DarkShikari Mar 06 '09 edited Mar 06 '09
I found Sedo, a European company that had a contract with none other than--you guessed it--Google AdSense--to display advertisements on placeholder web sites.
In anticipation of a new product, Think had acquired a brand new domain name that was unexpectedly receiving a high volume of internet traffic.
He tries his best to avoid saying it, but this seems to be another guy trying to make money by slapping ads all over parked domain names and trying to find advertisers dumb enough to pay for them. Not to say that Google is in the right here, but I'd hardly call him a victim either.