Typosquatter Loses Battle With Google
Posted by Douglas Sorocco, July 11, 2005 at 4:39 am
Last week, the National Arbitration Forum released a ruling in favor of Google. The issue was whether certain domain names were confusingly similar to Google's domain name. The disputed domain names included googkle.com, ghoogle.com, gfoofle.com and gooigle.com. Since the extra letter in each name is next to a correct letter, it appears that this is a case of "typosquatting." According to Wikipedia, "[t]yposquatting is a form of cybersquatting which relies on the chances that a person who enters a website address into a web browser will accidentally enter an incorrect website address and be led to an alternative address which the cybersquatter owns"
The decision is only one of thousands of domain name disputes heard annually by the National Arbitration Forum.
For more, check out the National Arbitration Forum Blog, or the AP story (via BusinessWeek Online).
In my research, I found that ggogle.com, gooogle.com, gogle.com, and googlee.com all lead to Google (with googlee.com leading to the English version). However, googgle.com and googlle.com lead to other sites. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw these sites challenged soon.