Via Bret Fausett’s LexText:
In its opposition to a motion, BelgiumDomains and the other Registrar Defendants described their business practices:
The Registrar Defendants servers are maintained at a facility operated by Internap Network Services Corporation (”Internap”?). (Exhibit A, Declaration of Ezequiel Guilleron in Support of the Registrar Defendants’ Opposition to Plaintiffs’ Motion for Sanctions (”Guilleron Decl.”?) at Para. 8.) Netrian’s servers process millions of domain registrations and deletions every day. (Id.) Processing those transactions requires large amounts of disk space to store temporary cache data associated with those transactions.
Emphasis added. Yes, that’s right, these registrars are registering and deleting “millions” of domain names “every day.”
The Declaration of Ezequiel Guilleron, the CTO who manages these servers, repeats the same facts:
I am responsible for maintaining servers Netrian uses to host the domain name registration services operated by its United States subsidiaries…. Each day Netrian’s servers process millions of domain registrations and deletions.
Now stay tuned for the real kicker.
Dell obtained a preliminary injunction against the Registrar Defendants, the companies responsible for the domain kiting/trademark infringement scheme, and were able to attach the revenue that those defendants receive each month….from Google.
How much do they receive from Google Adsense?
The numbers in a Stipulated Order (see Paragraph
are in ranges. Amazing ranges. The first $1,000,000 the defendants receive from Google each month is to be paid into a special escrow fund to be held for Dell’s benefit should it win at trial. The second $1,000,000 received each month is to be paid back to the defendants. Everything over $2,000,000 each month is split 50/50 between the escrow fund and the defendants.
The question is why no one is going after Google, Yahoo in Tasting/Kiting cases? In such extreme cases as the case above these companies know very well what is going on, or otherwise they wouldn’t have paid those amounts in the first pace. Many of my friends and associates heard me say over the years that top companies usually do whatever they can get away with and then when they push a little too far, they retract. Unfortunately, the above case is not the exception.
Google has recently cracked down on domain tasting.
Domains cannot use adsense for the first five days after they are registered. This should eliminate the quick gains of domain kiting.
Sahar, I think this is one of the reasons Google is not going monetize these kited domains anymore.
I’m not sure I agree about Google’s complicity in this case. They don’t vet the use of Adsense units on an individual basis- any publisher large or small can get the code in minutes. It seems obvious to me that Google can’t police the actions of publishers on a case by case basis. Their decision to not serve ads on domains less than five days old is simply a broad solution to the problem of publisher abuse in one situation.Yes they used to make money from tasters but they have made a business decision to no longer do so- a strategic decision, IMHO.