14 ms·
Gail, not Gmail
- sebkomianos 10y agoAnd how about this (from the source code): "<font size="+1" face="ARIAL,HELVETICA">"
- HappyTypist 10y agoThey must get a lot of mistakenly addressed emails.
- _nalply 10y agoPerhaps. They are using ProtonMail. (Found out by using dig.)
- david90 10y agoThey really need to conserve bandwidth.
- nicky0 10y agoI think they host it on their own home server, or at least did at the time of the WIPO case, since that mentions conserving DSL bandwidth.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ploggingdev 10y agoThey serve around 600MB per month (calculated based on the 2015 traffic numbers and current page size of 4.19KB). Based on their IP, they are hosted on DigitalOcean where even the cheapest plan provides 1TB of transfer per month, so bandwidth is not an issue.
- speps 10y agoOVH has a 1MB plan with every domain which has unlimited bandwidth.
- ubanholzer 10y agoIt's A 10 MB plan with 1 GB of traffic
- kahrkunne 10y agoI would plaster that shit with ads, it's free money.
- senectus1 10y agoQ: Don't you know that you could throw some ads up and make money? A: Yes, I know, thank you. For those who feel they need more advertising in their life, please have a look at our swanky Electronic Frontier Foundation ad below.
- Quarrelsome 10y agoIts free money but it makes the world a sader place. Like how enacted liability claims forced lawyers to force organisations to get insurance which forced unprofitable activities that couldn't justify the cost to cease. Like the egg and spoon race in my local town that used to occur for children every year. That ceased around the 2000's. The late 90's/2000's was when the bad "sue for everything" habit came from over the pond and the thousands of extra lawyers (trained by our desire for more people to go to university) suddenly needed to find work. Also this is when driving insurance premiums skyrocketed because suddenly everyone was claiming for whiplash because it was "free money" that we all have to collectively pay back. Some things that appear free are not really free, I guess that's my point.
- erikb 10y agoI'd probably do it, too. However check out what the owners say about it: > Q: Are you interested in monetizing gail.com? > A: No, but thanks for asking. > Q: Don't you know that you could throw some ads up and make money? > A: Yes, I know, thank you. For those who feel they need more advertising in their life, please have a look at our swanky Electronic Frontier Foundation ad below.
- bronlund 10y agoThis just made my day. I'm a big believer in karma and you obviously have your shit together :)
- erdemozg 10y agoI would be tempted to implement a custom SMTP server that accepts every email as if that target mailbox exists and collect them on a nosql db (just for curiosity and technical challenge) though I have no idea if I'd face any legal issues.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- NKCSS 10y agoIt's called Catch-All; I have it set up for my Google For Work account (e.g. I have a gmail that receives @my domain). So, you could use gmail to catch all e-mails to @gail.com; no need for a 'custom SMTP server'.
- throwanem 10y agoYou can also do this with a real MTA; no need for Google, either.
- NKCSS 10y agoI know; was just an example of an available 'Catch-All' solution. Back in the day™ I wrote a C# dll to add the functionality to my Exchange server (was not an option back then; don't know if it's possible out of the box now). There are many solutions once you know what to look for (e.g. the phrase 'Catch-All')
- erdemozg 10y agoThanks for the info. I didn't know it was that easy.
- Cpoll 10y agoI wanted this and I couldn't find it, thanks! How much spam do you get from the Catch-All?
- tokenizerrr 10y ago> though I have no idea if I'd face any legal issues. Why would you? It's standard practice to set up a catch-all for your domain and you can just configure postfix to do that.
- synesso 10y agoThat is wonderful. If only my common gmail typo (gmamil) was as delightful, instead of being a vector for evil.
- Beltiras 10y agogmamil.com takes you places.....
- binocarlos 10y agohaha amazing - the 'm' key on my keyboard broke a few months ago - I'm fairly sure I account for at least 2% of the hits that month!
- shilch 10y agoSo you visited gail.co?
- vmarsy 10y agoOnly if the parent doesn't know about Ctrl+Enter and still waste time trying to type ".com"
- magic_beans 10y agoWhat is this shortcut you speak of? And in which browsers is it useful?
- binocarlos 10y agoGood question - I had probably hit enter for `gail.com` having typed it out at one point - then muscle memory of typing `gmai` + enter -> google suggest = 'gail.com'
- uptownhr 10y agohow do you get an account?
- blauditore 10y agoI think you couldn't make much money out of this anyway. 5k daily visitors sounds decent, but they are of low "quality": They quickly leave and would generate bad click-through rates. It would probably yield less than $100 a month.
- edpichler 10y agoIt would make less than 40 USD month, I guess. I am comparing to a page with similar quantity of unique visitors I have.
- chrismorgan 10y agoHow about if you monetised it by phishing, pretending to actually be gmail.com?
- mfukar 10y agoHow about punching a policeman, instead, and cut down on the time until you are transferred to a cell?
- gravypod 10y agoThere's nothing wrong with receiving emails. I don't think it's actually illegal to do that. Just a bit morally off.
- detaro 10y agoJust receiving e-mails would hardly be a way to "monetize it by phishing".
- Cpoll 10y agoYou could probably just redirect all emails to @gmail.com, and most users would be none the wiser. Then you'd be able to trivially do password resets on any accounts that were created with the typo domain.
- a_rahmanshah 10y agoSomewhat related: http://www.purple.com http://www.purple.com
- ipsum2 10y agoAlso in fun domain-related trivia: http://nissan.com/ http://nissan.com/
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- gravypod 10y agoSo you can have a last name, use it as your trademark first, file all sorts of documents, get two domains, and then be put through the hoops by a forign company? That's crazy. This guy whould have been awarded damages. He was the first to use Nissan in America before the auto-company in 1984.
- MuppetMaster42 10y agoIt's the same reason we don't have Burger King in Australia. We have Hungry Jack's. When burger king tried to start its brand in Australia way back when, they were unable to register the burger king licence in all states because in one state a man already had a long running burger place by that name. So instead of having every state bar one with burger kings, they instead opted for a new name entirely.
- sbarre 10y agoThe story of nissan.com has always been a fascinating (and angering) case study since domains have been a thing and since the UDRP was put in place. Nissan (the car company) has been predatory and downright evil in their attempts to wrest nissan.com from Fred.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- 77yy77yy 10y agoThe UDRP process is a joke and they got lucky with one panelist. Best go with three and an attorney. They're easily leaving over US$ 500 a day on the table, for many years. Even if you hate advertising, take the money and donate to some charity. There are many who can use that kind of funds. Wasteful.
- robk 10y ago$100 CPMs? No way. With 5k uniques per day, maybe he'd make $5 a day with low quality, quick-leaving traffic. Unless he were to do shady stuff like affiliate redirects to gail.de or something.
- adventured 10y ago> Even if you hate advertising, take the money and donate to some charity. There are many who can use that kind of funds. It's terrible, all these people with houses in prominent traffic locations and people driving vehicles in high density urban environments, who refuse to place advertising all over their property. So much money being left on the table - even at low ad rates - they could be helping the less fortunate with those billions of collective ad dollars.
- tmaly 10y agoThis is what I loved about the web back in the day. I remember putting up my first web page and coming across Matt's script archive.
- ourcat 10y agoMatt's Script Archive is where it all began for me. All those years ago a company paid me £15k to build them a website which they could update themselves. So I turned WWWBoard into a kind of blog/publishing system for them and they loved it. Cha-ching! :)
- dvirsky 10y agoI once worked with a guy who had a domain that is the name of a major bank in my country (i.e. he owned {bank_name}.xyz and the bank's domain is {bank_name}-bank.xyz). Somehow he managed to hold on to it over the years. Anyway, he had a catch-all email account for the domain, an sometimes interesting stuff would arrive. One day he showed me an email he had just received from a major investment firm that read more or less like this: > Hey Jane, what's up? > So I need to transfer those $50M we talked about over the phone the other day, just wanted to confirm the account. It's 123456789, right? If not, do send me the account number. Thanks! Of course he didn't even reply, but he said these things happened pretty often.
- erelde 10y agoSmells like phishing to me :) An email trying to pass as a normal workplace email.
- roninb 10y agoI'm sure a vast majority of it was phishing, but you may be surprised to know how many and how often people send info like that over unencrypted email.
- erelde 10y agoOh yes I agree, that's why phishing exists in the first place. Because people do it, so someone can take advantage of those people's (bad) habits.
- JoelMcCracken 10y agoRecently found out that our HR department has been sending all kinds of personal info over email (repeatedly...) Names, addresses, social security numbers, etc.
- dvirsky 10y agoI seriously doubt it was, at least not a blanket automated attempt aimed at multiple people. It was years ago but IIRC, there were actual names and the email was clearly between two people who knew each other personally, contained phone numbers, etc. Also, it wasn't in English, so it wasn't some automated Nigerian scam or something like that for sure. And if someone went through the trouble of obtaining so much intel (names, phones, company titles, bank branches, etc) - makes no sense they would then get the email wrong. Also, at most the person sending the email would gain is some business bank account number, that's probably semi public knowledge anyway, without any authentication-enabling information. This stuff is done by fax in my country to this very day, I'm not surprised at all that such an unencrypted mail was sent.
- burntsushi 10y agoThe FAQ links to an account of an attempted takeover of the domain that I found fascinating to read: http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2006/d2006-0655.html http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2006/d2006... Some interesting excerpts: > vii) it is unlikely that the Respondent was unaware of the Complainant’s trademark considering the fame and tradition of the trademark GAIL I have personally never heard of GAIL and found it funny that this was part of the complaint. They even move on from "unlikely" to "fact" when accusing the owners of gail.com that they were acting in bad faith: > Furthermore, because the Respondent registered the domain name exactly when the Complainant increased its sales of GAIL products to the United States, this should be identified as an abusive practice. Lastly, the Respondent knew about the existence of the Complainant and of its GAIL trademark and nevertheless proceeded with the registration of the domain name. The owners of gail made a counter-claim: > (d) Reverse Domain Name Hijacking > The Respondent alleges that the Complainant is using the Policy in bad faith for reverse domain name hijacking. The arbiters ended up deciding that the owners of gail.com had a "legitimate interest" in operating the domain name, so they didn't comment on GAIL's accusation of bad faith. (As someone who really detests IP law in its various forms, I've always found it unnerving that domain names can be seized simply based on whether a third party thinks your use is "legitimate" or not.)
- zymhan 10y agoIt is weird how DNS names can be legally reassigned. It's like being forced to move to a different street or something. Or to give up a neat phone number because another company has the same phoneword.
- KanyeBest 10y agoHow else would you deal with cybersquatters?
- mynameisvlad 10y ago> I have personally never heard of GAIL and found it funny that this was part of the complaint. The best part is that the first result for "GAIL" isn't even this company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAIL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAIL
- Aissen 10y ago> Q: I think you're infringing on my trademark... > A: If you consult with someone well versed in trademark law, they will tell you that you can't have an exclusive trademark on a common word or name. My husband and I successfully defended ourselves against an attempted domain takeover in 2006; see WIPO Case D2006-0655 for more information. Well, it depends on the jurisdiction. In France, in the infamous "Milka" case, the opposite happened: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milka_contre_Kraft_Foods https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milka_contre_Kraft_Foods (french)
- eriknstr 10y agoI remember reading about that case in a web design magazine. Here's a very short article from the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4348585.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4348585.stm
- byroot 10y agoEven in France that wouldn't fly. Milka lost this case because besides having the milka.fr domains, her webdesign was using a color close to the brand one. As a result the judges ruled that she was piggybacking on the established brand. If her design was say green instead of purple, she would likely have won the trial.
- Aissen 10y agoYes, this is one of the reasons cited in the Wikipedia article I linked. Another might be not having the legal resources of a US$ 20-40B company.
- irfanka 10y agoSomeone from Bosnia registered http://microsoft.ba/ http://microsoft.ba/ - and is showing Linux logos there! He's been holding onto the domain for years, now.
- nojvek 10y agoThat's funny. I guess if they try to make their site look like a legit Microsoft site then they'll be in a lot of trouble.
- Exuma 10y agoI never understand people that wouldn't sell something like this. So if Google offered you $500,000 you're not going to take it, just to make this stupid statement that you're against ads? Get real.
- alekratz 10y agoIt's her personal site, and it looks like she just wants to be left alone. You get real, not everything is about money.
- Exuma 10y agoSorry, but at some point logic and reason take over. No one's mentioning money grubbing capitalism here at the expense of someone else... What we have here is literally a blank page, that offers no value to the reader. Perhaps if they showed something worthwhile I could understand. Yet, It's only a pat-myself-on-the-back message how they defend their name. So they USE the name to talk about how they're protecting the name. That's like people that make money teaching people how to make money. Just take the damn money and use it for something good. Edit: this is reminiscent of nissan.com ... he's selling computer repair for $50/hr... yet could sell his domain for millions. The main purpose of his site to primarily advertise how he's standing up to lawsuits.
- alekratz 10y agoIt doesn't exist for you. It exists for Gail. Not every website on this internet exists to be a product or sell you something.
- stagbeetle 10y agoPerhaps. But with the limited nature of domain names, gail.com could definitely be used for something more productive, and helpful, to society. Considering the state it's in now, you're looking at a large upper range.
- jug 10y agoThe HTML is clearly also from 1996. :)
- skaber 10y agoSo there's really no way for a company to take over a domain if they have a legitimate reason? My company's dot com shows what looks to be a low value video. I've reached out to the guy a few years ago and he simply replied that there were some things that money couldn't buy... Petal.com if you're interested. I'd love to have that domain, and yeah it's affecting our brand.
- skaber 10y agoLooks like it's no longer loading anything.
- austinjp 10y agoLawyers would take a long, expensive timedefining "legitimate".
- nine_k 10y agoLikely it was not enough money %)
- gregshap 10y agoThere are ways but "I named my company after a common English word, someone already owns the domain for that word and it would benefit me to own it instead" is not a legitimate reason.
- nkrisc 10y agoAgreed 100%. If your company was founded sometime after 2000 and you picked a name before registering that domain, you have no one to blame but yourself. You could say 2003 if you want to be generous.
- feijfe33 10y agoI bought my first domain in 1996 for a startup I was doing. I thought I was late to the domain registration game.
- sbarre 10y ago
- khana 10y agogotta wait for perishment.
- tyingq 10y agoAlso interesting in this space.... Microsoft vs a High School Kid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_vs._MikeRoweSoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_vs._MikeRoweSoft Google fails to win dispute for oogle.com: http://blog.dnattorney.com/2012/07/google-loses-ooglecom-domain-name.html http://blog.dnattorney.com/2012/07/google-loses-ooglecom-dom... Julia Roberts gets control of her namesake domain, but Bruce Springsteen does not: http://www.ivanhoffman.com/bruce.html http://www.ivanhoffman.com/bruce.html
- feijfe33 10y agoAlso Trent Reznor is an asshole. http://reznor.com http://reznor.com Nissan are also assholes. I was going to get a G35, but nope after their web nonsense: https://www.google.com/#q=nissan.com+lawsuit https://www.google.com/#q=nissan.com+lawsuit
- mrstone 10y agoUhh... so don't even try going to oogle.com It just takes over your browser and makes it impossible to close without killing the PID.
- NoahTheDuke 10y agoIn Chrome, I clicked the "Prevent page from creating additional pop-ups." checkbox, and then closed the page normally. What browser are you using that doesn't have such an option?
- thisdepends888 10y agoScummiest example I've come across: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Motors_vs._Nissan_Computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Motors_vs._Nissan_Compu...
- diegoperini 10y agoThe site can maybe be used for presenting easy to understand educational content about phishing.
- paulcole 10y agoThe site is already being used. I don't think they're looking for bright ideas.
- mungoid 10y agoI want more people like this domain owner in the world
- bridgeplayer12 10y agoIt really annoys me that they are not monetizing this.
- bridgeplayer12 10y agoIt really annoys me that they are not monetizing this.
- ankimal 10y agoWhy not show ads and give the money to a charity or any other foundation of your choice?
- jordigh 10y agoIt appears that they object to ads in principle ("if you feel like you need more ads in your life..."), which is something I respect immensely. I wish more people made a stand against advertising. It is psychological manipulation that we are guilted into accepting for the good of capitalism.
- SomeStupidPoint 10y agoIt's not even for the good of capitalism: it transforms the market in to a competition to weaponize psychology instead of creating value -- something most of us would argue is a market inefficiency of the modern system. Advertisers will eventually strangle capitalism by increasing the irrationality of market actors until the basic mechanism of effective capital allocation breaks down. Some would argue we're toeing or slightly across that line.
- VT_Drew 10y agoWho is going to advertise on gail.com? The numbers of visitors is meaningless if the vast majority of your visitors take 2 seconds to look at the site and say "Ooops I made a typo, this isn't the page I wanted. Let me fix that." Most visitors probably don't read much of the site at all, let along click an ad on it.
- teetermld 10y agoTrying way too hard to make people think anyone cares...
- nrki 10y agoIf Google was worried about mail being siphoned off (via typos), they'd just have to setup a periodic automatic check. gail.com don't currently accept email for @gmail.com: $ host -t mx gail.com gail.com mail is handled by 10 mail.protonmail.ch. $ nc -w1 mail.protonmail.ch 25 220 mail1i.protonmail.ch ESMTP Postfix HELO test.com 250 mail1i.protonmail.ch mail from:<test@test.com> 250 2.1.0 Ok rcpt to:<test@gmail.com> 554 5.7.1 <test@gmail.com>: Relay access denied 421 4.7.0 mail1i.protonmail.ch Error: too many errors
- peeters 10y agoI'm lost, probably because I know nothing about SMTP and mail routing. If you were worried about typos where they accidentally use @gail.com instead of @gmail.com, why would it not accepting @gmail.com be relevant? Or are you talking about a typo in the routing config itself?
- crooked-v 10y agoI wonder how many people have sent angry emails to gail.com for not being gmail.com. You may think I'm joking, but think back to that "some random blog post showed up as the first Google result for 'Facebook'" incident and you'll get what I mean.
- PopsiclePete 10y agoReminds me of http://www.nissan.com http://www.nissan.com. I get why it's appealing on a "little guy against big nameless corporation" level, but honestly, it's like an annoying kid who wants attention. It's not like gail.com or nissan.com are providing any content that 99.999999999% would find remotely interesting or useful, I imagine most are just annoyed to accidentally stumble on some barely-coherent anti-capitalist rambling. But I get it. It's cool to be a rebel.
- vollmond 10y agoI mean... if you walk into my storefront and get annoyed I'm not selling what you expected, because you meant to walk into my neighbor's storefront, why should I feel bad about that? Why should I change anything? Seems like an odd perspective. My domain doesn't have any content most people would find remotely interesting or useful. If a large corporation names a product similarly to my domain, should I feel pressured into changing? Cue Office Space Michael Bolton quote.
- belovedeagle 10y agoThis comment is what really worries me about domain name disputes. You seem to be under the impression that http is the only use for DNS, and you are very very wrong.
- nnoitra 10y agoLol. I don't see why you'd do something like this unless you had infinite money. Put some ads and donate the money to any cause you care about. There are people starving in this world and I'm gonna go ahead keep my famous page that gets loads of hits just to prove that I don't have to sell it or put ads on it. Fuck you, by us!
- aakilfernandes 10y agoGail for President
- dfrey 10y agoI can understand the desire to not cave to "the man" and keep your domain, but why not just sell it for $ludicrous_sum and register another domain?
- legohead 10y agoEspecially considering the enormous amount of TLDs now.
- petercooper 10y agoThe husband in question is a very accomplished engineer and owns his own first name as a domain too :-) https://kevin.org/ https://kevin.org/ - not dot com sadly!
- SubiculumCode 10y agoI wonder if gmail sends him/her a small check to keep gail.com clean and friendly. No advertising needed.