Domain Registration Related News
Ansearch launches amid domain name dispute
April 2005
Local search engine Ansearch will begin
commercial operations today despite being accused
of domain name poaching.
The company, which has been in beta phase over the
past few months, has come under fire in the last
few weeks for registering common misspellings of
popular domain names like 'yahho.com.au'. Ansearch
is willing to transfer the domain names of any
company which protests, and has even publicly
listed a free-call 1800 number for complaints.
However, there has yet to be any interest.
"Nobody has approached Ansearch with respect to
their domain yet," Ansearch CEO Dean Jones told
ZDNet Australia . "It turned into a very
interesting storm in a teacup."
The company is in discussions with .au Domain
Administration (auDA), the body which administers
domain names in Australia, to iron out the issue.
Jones said auDA's policy on misspellings of
popular domain names needs to go through a testing
process -- a process that has yet to take place.
He claimed the act of registering misspellings of
popular domain names was common in the search
engine industry. "You have a current situation
where someone like a ninemsn will receive that
traffic if we do not," he said. "So on a
competitive level we at least needed to explore
it."
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