Google Wins Cybersquatting Dispute - Cybersquatting in the Worst Way
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It's one thing for a person to register their displeasure with a company by purchasing the domain name ThisCompanySucks.com. Even if they vent their ire on the site and encourage others to do the same, there are many who would consider this a form of free speech -- though it's a good bet that large companies with well-paid lawyers aren't among them (which helps to explain why www.microsoftsucks.com doesn't exist). Gridasov was doing it simply to raise the traffic on his site. Indeed, according to the Associated Press, he acknowledged as much in an email to him, but claimed that he hadn't heard any complaints about it until he began to post code on his sites from another company. He claimed in his email that the code wouldn't cause any trouble.
It doesn't appear to be that simple, however. On April 26 -- just a few short weeks before Google would file its complaint against Gridasov -- Finnish company F-Secure filed an advisory on its website about googkle.com. In the advisory, the virus and malware identification company explains that, "If a user opens a malicious website, his/her computer gets hijacked -- a lot of different malware gets automatically downloaded and installed: trojan droppers, trojan downloaders, backdoors, a proxy trojan and a spying trojan. Also a few adware-related files are installed." After going through a lengthy description of what happens when a user visits googkle.com, F-Secure sums up "So as you see, a nice malware package get(s) install on an affected computer: 2 backdoors, 2 trojan droppers, a proxy trojan, a spying trojan (that steals bank-related information) and a trojan downloader.
Was Gridasov a dupe, or was he turning a profit one way or another from hosting the malicious applications on his website? It hardly matters either way. It is certainly not the sort of thing that Google would want its name to be associated with, considering that its own Sergey (Brin) is credited with originating the philosophy at the company that Google should "do no evil." Given that the domain names also contained links to products that are not related to Google (according to a Reuters story), it seems pretty clear that Gridasov was acting in bad faith. This left the arbitrator with a rather easy decision to make.
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