Why do you suppose they called it Firefox Paid Directory? They're clearly not in the browser business so perhaps this is a case where trademarks don't offer protection, but it seems to me they're using the Firefox name to increase their own page rank and then selling that to others. Are links from a site like that really worth $40?
Posted by: a | July 23, 2007 5:45 PM
Asa, have you seen these? These are the sponsored links that I get from Google when I search for Firefox.
http://www.firefox.bz/en/
http://www.firefox2.net/
I don't know what to make of them, as they don't offer any file for download!
Posted by: Kostas | July 24, 2007 12:21 AM
Well, their PageRank is real enough, so it depends what you mean by "scam". Are they ripping off their customers? Dunno. Are they dodgy bastards that make the internet worse off by their very existence? Certainly. I'm really not sure why they put Firefox in the name, I haven't done any significant SEO work in ages, but I presume they have some rationale for it.
IANAL, but I suspect with a brand as strong as Firefox you will find that your ability to sue for trademark infringement in even *remotely* related areas is pretty good. Furthermore, I would say you could get ICANN to yank the domains out from under *any* of these dodgy bastards under clause 4b(iv) of the UDRP
Actually, given that they are selling their customers google juice that could dissapear at any moment if Google aggressively applied their new paid-link aversion, or Mozilla decided to invoke the UDRP, I would say that there's no doubt they are scamming their customers.
No, hold on, although their front page has PR4 according to my google toolbar (vs say, your blog's front page with 7, which is prox 1000 times better I think?), their sub pages, the ones with the links people paid for, have PR0. I guess Google *has* applied their paid-link-aversion algo to this site. So anyone who bought a link from them in the past has been ripped off, and anyone who buys a link from them *now* is as thick as two short planks.
Posted by: Seth Wagoner | July 24, 2007 7:02 AM
yuck. like entrepreneurs of dead domains they are scum. I noticed they have operadir.com and netscapedir.com but not internetexplorerdir.com :D