Windows Phone Thoughts: VeriSign Eyes Valuable 'Junk' Traffic

This has nothing to do with Pocket PCs, but it's very interesting for the impact that it might have on the way people do searches and find sites. I don't know how many people misspell "pocketpcthoughts", but if they get it wrong, their browser tells them as much. But what if, instead, they're taken to a page listing off paid-for entries related to the domain name? That person might never try to find this site if they start clicking on other links. What's strange is that I tried this on a few typo'd domain names yesterday, and it worked - but today I can't seem to bring up the Verisign page that this article talks about. See if you can do it. ;-)

"VeriSign Inc. today used its power as the operator of the "dot-com" and "dot-net" Internet domains to redirect a torrent of valuable "junk" Internet traffic away from Microsoft and America Online into its own proprietary search page. Once VeriSign finishes installing the system virtually any Internet surfer in the world who enters an incorrect Internet address ending in .com or .net into their browser will be funneled into the Mountain View, Calif.-based Internet giant's newly christened "Site Finder" service. VeriSign expects to complete the installation before midnight Monday.

VeriSign confirmed last week it was testing the system, rankling officials at Microsoft and America Online, both of which lose a source of traffic -- and revenue -- to their own in-house redirection pages. At stake is control of a large amount of valuable Internet traffic. Every second, somewhere in the world, someone types an incorrect address into their Internet browser and gets bounced to a Web page he or she didn't want. VeriSign says it handles more than 20 million incorrect queries every day."