Comments on: Google & Dell’s Revenue-Generating URL Error Pages Drawing Fire

By: michaelzimmer

michaelzimmer — Mon, 28 May 2007 23:32:37 +0000

Have you experienced this first-hand on a Dell machine? I’m curious as to whether a Google cookies get placed if a user is pointed to one of these “error pages”.

By: Ilgaz

Ilgaz — Mon, 28 May 2007 16:07:19 +0000

I forgot something. When you put something to “control panel add remove programs” right with OS/Vendor installation, the general audience end user will be afraid of removing it since “it came with their system”.

Ask any antivirus vendor for example. You can code the best antivirus on Earth and provide it for free and yet they will keep running the pre-installed trial antivirus regardless of its bugs or price.

By: Ilgaz

Ilgaz — Mon, 28 May 2007 16:03:30 +0000

Not just that, there are some very gray area software (lets not use the term) advertised on your Microsoft “search” page via Google ads.

They are also founding member of stopbadware.org too.

By: mblair

mblair — Thu, 24 May 2007 00:47:22 +0000

Dave N – Isn’t there a pretty substantial difference in intentions between Dell/Google and OpenDNS here? OpenDNS is opt-in and, as I understand it, they try to redirect the typo first if they can decipher it.

By: Dave N

Dave N — Wed, 23 May 2007 18:52:18 +0000

I thought this was a particular good review of the Dell error redirects. However, I think it is worth noting that the set of organizations making money off of typos is far more widespread than any one (or two) companies.

ISPs, Web browsers, web hosting companies, PC manufacturers and Google/Yahoo are all complicit in the business.

Even OpenDNS makes all its money from typos (I find this particularly disingenuous, since they are very vocal about how they ‘fix’ this problem).

I wrote a more detailed note here for those interested:

http://www.naffziger.net/blog/2007/05/23/domain-typos-everyone-has-a-hand-in-it/

By: jludington

jludington — Wed, 23 May 2007 18:33:01 +0000

It's worth noting that the instructions provided in the "What's This" link do not provide a solution for removing this URL redirect on all systems. On my Dell D620 laptop with Windows Vista, I had to turn off a browser add-on to get the "feature" to stop working. I provide a list of the removal steps for anyone interested in getting rid of this junk.

By: Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan — Wed, 23 May 2007 16:46:11 +0000

Thanks, David — but same back at you. You had a great story about this!

By: David Ulevitch

David Ulevitch — Wed, 23 May 2007 15:02:36 +0000

Wow, this is an even better write-up than mine. You know much more about the history of it than I do.

I’m going to link to it in the post.

Thanks!