Google Opens Up A Can Of Anti-Typosquatting Goodness

This via Wired News; apparently, Google does not look kindly on those who attempt to thwart its almighty-ness.

"An internet arbitrator has awarded Google the rights to several website addresses that relied on typographical errors to exploit the online search engine's popularity so computer viruses and other malicious software could be unleashed on unsuspecting visitors.

The National Arbitration Forum, a legal alternate to litigating in court, sided with a Google complaint alleging that Sergey Gridasov of St. Petersburg, Russia, had engaged in "typosquatting" by operating websites named googkle.com, ghoogle.com and gooigle.com. "

This is a common problem. I'm sure that you've probably typed in a site name wrong and whoa! here comes the porn, or the generic link farm, or every once in a while, a really interesting site. However, taking advantage of this bad spelling tendency on the part of so many search engine users is considered bad form. As Google would say, spell me wrong once, shame on you. Spell me wrong twice and build a site to take advantage of other people making that spelling error, shame on me. Oh, and I'll sue your lying butt, too.

Related: Being the largest and broadest search engine in the world, Google gets a lot of these shysters trying to pull one over. Learn more about Google in Google 101, get some Google Facts, or have some Sunday morning fun with the Google Quiz.