Elliot raised an interesting issue on this blog today on how certain ISP (Road Runner in his case), resolve incomplete URL in the browser to a site other than what your intending.
Once Elliot raised the issue, I went in a different direction and tried the same term Elliot was searching for in Safari, “TVlistings” on Firefox.
I have Bell South as my ISP (owned by AT&T) and I don’t have the same problem that Elliot had.
The problem I see is is wider than the ISP problem that Elliot found.
The problem I see is that browsers now think that they are search engines and decide where to take you when you type in a partial URL.
Let me explain.
If you use Safari as your brower and type in say “football”, the browser does what is suppose to do (depending on your ISP) and resolves to the domain to football.com.
However if you type in football into Firefox, it doesn’t take you to football.com, but to NFL.com.
Why?
Because Firefox is operating as a search engine and taking you to where they think you want to go rather than where you are actually wanting to go.
Take Elliot’s example of TVlistings.
Type it into Safari (against depending on your ISP) and you go as you should to tvlistings.com.
Type it into Firefox and you go to its competitor tvguide.com
Type in the term “attorney” on FireFox and you do not get taken to attorney.com but to a wikipedia.org entry.
Type in the term “Trial Attorney” into FireFox and you do not get take to TrialAttorney.com but you are send to a entry for thefreedictionary.com instead.
On the other hand if you type the word “domain” into Firefox you get taken to domain.com.
So basically, the browser has become an uncontrollable search engine, sometime auto completing the partial domain you type in, but other times sending you to wherever they want to send you, seemingly without any rhyme or reason and that is a much bigger problem.
Mike,
I’m sure you know that Firefox has a relationship with Google and receives mucho
dinero from Google when Users use the search engine box on Firefox.
I just typed every single example you gave both into Firefox browser and into Google directly and the results are identical in every case.
Translation: when you type into Firefox without an extension you are actually typing into Google.
Ditto what Patrick wrote. Appears to default to the highest ranking entry in Google for the search phrase.
Patrick
Yes I am aware that Google is the largest monetary contributor to the FireFox project.
Yet a Browser should be a Browser not a search engine.
These are the type of issues that give rise to antitrust actions
MHB,
If the browser directs to .com extention, isn’t it like promoting .com against .net or any other TLD?
http://frankschilling.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/03/more_browser_in.html
N-
The browser has to pick something unless it just goes to an unresolved page.
I have no problem with it going to the ,com rather than a .net, .org or .cc.
However, once it starts guessing where you want to go and sends you to something other than the site.com, its playing search engine, and no longer a browser
btw, if you type “tailgateapproved.com” into the sniffer or search bar instead of address bar as at least 1000 game watchers did this afternoon that I know of, look at what turns up.
That would be tailgateapproved.com with no quote marks as a typical web surfer would type it
Owen
If you type in any term with the .com into the browser its going to resolve to the site
NoT sure what the point is
there was something on tech crunch this morning about some israeli kid being
granted a patent for taking you to a site typed in without the dotcom. very strange indeed.
http://government.zdnet.com/?p=5516
Israeli firm claims patent on URL shortcuts
In the annals of patent abuse, this looks like a good one. TechCrunch reports that the stock of Israeli public company Netex has skyrocketed, thanks to a patent that could have Google, Microsoft and Yahoo scrambling to pay licensing fees. Or the companies could stand their ground and force Netex into a very expensive patent prosecution action.
Israeli
Now that is really interesting.
Unbelievable that Microsoft, Yahoo or Google did not have a patent on this or buy the company out a LONG time ago
http://government.zdnet.com/?p=5516
Israeli firm claims patent on URL shortcuts
In the annals of patent abuse, this looks like a good one. TechCrunch reports that the stock of Israeli public company Netex has skyrocketed, thanks to a patent that could have Google, Microsoft and Yahoo scrambling to pay licensing fees. Or the companies could stand their ground and force Netex into a very expensive patent prosecution action.