Trademark typos and AdSense

Making money from typos of trademarked terms

[farmboy]

There is an article currently on the Seattle Times website concerning people registering typo versions of trademarked terms and then sending the traffic to a page with ads, often AdSense ads. (It looks like the article originally appeared on the Washington Post site, so you may be able to find it on either site)

One of the "complaints" in the article is that Google doesn't allow trademarked terms to be used in ads but does allow typo versions to be used to grab type-in traffic to send to pages with AdSense.

Here's a brief excerpt:

"It seems very hard to reconcile Google's support of this activity with their 'Do No Evil' motto," said Ben Edelman, a Harvard University researcher who has looked extensively into advertising on unused domains.

I wonder if someone at Google is beginning to regret ever coming up with this "Do no evil" mantra?

FarmBoy

[jomaxx]

I wonder if someone at Google is beginning to regret ever coming up with this "Do no evil" mantra?

Heh, I wouldn't be surprised. Not because they intend to make evildoing part of their core business, but because someone always ends up accusing them of "evil" every time there's a nitpicking little spat.

In this case the answer seems obvious. If the site is infringing on come company's trademark, then the company can easily go to ICANN and get the domain back. If the site is NOT infringing, or at least cannot be demonstrated to be necessarily infringing, then what's Google supposed to do about that?

Let's face it: There are so many trademarks in existence that almost any website could theoretically be accused of infringement by someone somewhere.

[farmboy]

One interesting part of the article was when the reporter generated 100 misspellings of a certain ISP's domain. 38 of the variations were parked at oingo and served up Google ads - according to the reporter.

FarmBoy

[jomaxx]

BTW I'm not saying it's not a sleazy business. I've got typosquatters targeting one of my own successful domains. But that's life.