For a regular internet user, there is nothing strange here. Another squatter, who got in early in the game and is now raking in the cash, by putting up a parking page with ads on one of the many millions of URL's (Ain't Google Adsense wonderful).
Since in the overall scheme of things Orissa figures pretty much at the bottom of the heap, I wonder if it is only Orissa or are the other domains also being squatted on...
www.uttarpradesh.in
Yup.
So A quick lookup on who, what, where and we get the registrant as (drumroll...) the Government of India.
Registrant Name:Government of India
Registrant Organization:RESERVED NAME
Registrant Street1:ERNET India, 6 CGO Complex, Lodi Road
Registrant Street2:New Delhi
Registrant City:New Delhi
Registrant Postal Code:110003
Registrant Country:IN
Registrant Phone:+91.1124361895
Registrant FAX:+91.1124362924
Registrant Email:
So far so good. Wisely or otherwise, Government has reserved these domains. That set my mind ticking once more.
This could potentially be millions of dollars. ok ok, a few thousand dollars at the very least.
So, now back to the title of the post and issue at hand...
Who is making the money?
1) Government of India,
2) Government of Orissa,
3) Amardeep Chawla (he is the person listed as the contact) or
4) Someone else altogether.
Do the various state Governments have a right on the money that is being made?
And, I wonder, if Mr. Chidambaram knows of this alternate source of revenue?
Misc Reads: Do read a fascinating study by Mcafee on The State of Typo Squatting. Though technically this particular instance is not a case of Typo Squatting.
Forget about millions of dollars or even hundreds. These parked pages do not get a higher ranking in Google. So they get less hit and so makes less money. Mostly its about 10$ a month if you use adsense. Hence no point in blaming govt of being ignorant about it.
ReplyDelete-- Random Surfer