[HN Gopher] Argentine version of Google falls into "wrong" hands
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Argentine version of Google falls into "wrong" hands
 
Author : pedro-guimaraes
Score  : 250 points
Date   : 2021-04-22 15:50 UTC (7 hours ago)
 
web link (en.mercopress.com)
w3m dump (en.mercopress.com)
 
| throwaway_kufu wrote:
| I recently sold cryptocomicbook.com and decided to list some
| additional domains for sale, at the exact time I listed them a
| handful of ua.(TLDs) got listed for sale including ua.com and
| whoever listed them must have done it in bulk and given them all
| the same price ($76).
| 
| So I bought the ua.com for $76, at that point the seller must
| have realized what happened and immediately changed the sales
| price of all the other TLDs from $76 (example ua.co went from $76
| to a min of $48,000), the marketplace confirmed the seller was
| verified as the owner or had authority to sell ua.com. Of course
| after the fact the marketplace reversed the transaction, they
| oddly reconfirmed the seller was verified/legit (I thought they
| would say the seller got past their verification but wasn't
| legit), and they have refused to confirm why if the seller was
| legit that they reversed the sale transaction.
 
  | codezero wrote:
  | They reversed it because it was an honest mistake and most
  | people like to know that if they make the same mistake it can
  | be undone.
 
    | throwaway_kufu wrote:
    | Maybe...I tested your theory and asked them to reverse my
    | recent sale of cryptocomicbook.com on the same basis and my
    | request was declined.
    | 
    | In either case there is both contract law and state federal
    | law (unfair trade practices) that would support my claim in
    | the courts if I were so inclined.
 
    | masswerk wrote:
    | It may be worth noting that in most countries a contract
    | essentially is established by the consensus of wills by the
    | parties involved. An _error in objecto_ ( "I didn't mean the
    | thing I accidentally said or listed") is a legitimate excuse
    | and nullifies a contract. (The consensus didn't exist and
    | thus the contract had never been established in the first
    | place).
    | 
    | (This is also a reason why marketplaces, where things "just
    | happen", are, let's say, complicated, as they do not adhere
    | to this legal tradition.)
 
      | throwaway_kufu wrote:
      | It can be a defense in the US but not likely the case here,
      | the remedy wouldn't be specific performance (ie give me the
      | domain) but damages for a fair market value of what I paid
      | for, specific performance is very rare in the US. There
      | would also be claims against the marketplace (despite their
      | terms of service indemnifying them) other laws apply that
      | can't be waived under both federal and state law such as
      | fair trade practices acts and deceptive trade practices).
      | The whole point being anyone could increase prices that
      | were advertised and say oh my ad was in error rendering
      | every contract reversible and subject to post hoc price
      | increases.
 
    | GordonS wrote:
    | I have to agree - although I'm surprised the registrant
    | actually used common sense here, it was the fair thing to do.
 
      | supergirl wrote:
      | maybe it was a bug in their system, so they were on the
      | hook
 
  | clukic wrote:
  | As I read this I literally had a config file open in another
  | window with references to ua.com. it's owned by UnderArmour and
  | serves endpoints to their Fitness API.
  | 
  | This would have been one of the more interesting answers to the
  | most common support question at my company: "Why wont my runs
  | sync?"
 
| guytpearson1 wrote:
| Fun article, but they will get it back with relative ease.
| Happens all the time. Trademark domain.
 
  | amelius wrote:
  | Is it still a trademark violation if they use the domain to
  | sell something completely unrelated, e.g. shoes?
 
    | guytpearson1 wrote:
    | The problem with this is that Google isn't some generic term
    | for something else. A lot of case law around this kind of
    | stuff. Will get transferred back to Google in a heartbeat.
 
  | FridayoLeary wrote:
  | Just like that? A court order $4 dollar refund and have a nice
  | day? That's a bit anticlimatic.
 
    | techrat wrote:
    | Not everything ends up turning into a Michael Bay movie when
    | being resolved.
 
      | FridayoLeary wrote:
      | an important rule in life.
 
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| check this out https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26907303
 
  | SirSourdough wrote:
  | Sounds like a little-used TLD that ICANN has been trying to
  | phase out for decades. Google has individual sites for most of
  | countries that would have initially been under the umbrella of
  | the .su (USSR) TLD, and .su apparently has 2% of the usage of
  | .ru where Google already has a site.
  | 
  | Maybe they'll try to snap it up now that it's attracting a
  | little attention but they probably just don't really care about
  | it...
 
    | FridayoLeary wrote:
    | he's running a website under the name of google. You can play
    | it down, but that's pretty cool.
 
| [deleted]
 
| yuchi wrote:
| I once bought .org.it after some newspapaer misspelled our .it
| domain name as .org.it (which is a non-existant TLD) and I tried
| to regain the exposure.
| 
| They didn't let me through though... :(
 
| Trias11 wrote:
| Google probably threatened to abuse poor guy with legal action.
| 
| Similar to what MSFT did to the guy who totally legally
| registered mikerowesoft.com
 
  | utopcell wrote:
  | That is not how Google works.
 
| [deleted]
 
| ThothIV wrote:
| Google will sell you domains that it doesn't own. I've purchased
| .MX and .CO.UK domains from them just recently. I've purchased
| Thoth.zone, Thoth.mx and Thoth.pw from them. From
| networkingsolutions.com I've bought thoth.domains. It's a crazy
| turf war situation right now, given the broad international legal
| overlaps and so on and so forth.
 
| [deleted]
 
| why_Mr_Anderson wrote:
| This is still happening? It used to be very annoying decade or so
| ago, but I thought it was already solved/fixed/improved.
| 
| Are there really no option to make a domain registration without
| expiration?
 
| goodcjw2 wrote:
| Actually, it turns out http://google.ar/ might still be owned by
| someone else?
 
  | yreg wrote:
  | The article talks about google.com.ar, not google.ar. Secondary
  | .ar domains are generaly not available.
 
    | Franciscouzo wrote:
    | .ar domains have been available to the public since last
    | year.
 
| iso8859-1 wrote:
| Google has also failed to buy their Soviet domain name:
| http://google.su/
| 
| And they even forgot about http://google.xn--vermgensberatung-
| pwb/
 
  | Scoundreller wrote:
  | for the longest time, i thought .su meant sudan.
 
  | SllX wrote:
  | Can you even buy .su domains anymore? I was under the
  | impression that Russia was just sitting on it.
  | 
  | EDIT: answered my own question. It is apparently actively used.
 
  | julienreszka wrote:
  | Soviet union is dead, let's keep it that way
 
| asimpletune wrote:
| Once I told my friend ja.red was available for $9, and after he
| bought it they told him it was a mistake and reversed the
| transaction.
 
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/7nkiR
 
| freddyym wrote:
| The domain google.gi is still for sale, because it can only be
| purchased by people who live in Gibraltar.
| 
| See also, this post:
| https://tinyprojects.dev/posts/i_bought_netflix_dot_soy
 
  | utopcell wrote:
  | google.ar is also parked.
 
  | oauea wrote:
  | Wouldn't someone from Gibraltar be able to buy and lease it to
  | Google?
 
    | csomar wrote:
    | There are 30k people in Gibraltar and probably most of them
    | use the .com or .uk domain.
 
    | kortilla wrote:
    | Yeah, but Google wouldn't want any part of that type of
    | arrangement. Better to let it go un-associated with the
    | country than to depend on some other party that can extort at
    | renewal time.
 
      | hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
      | Can't Domain name providers do pretty much the same thing?
      | You're only leasing a domain after all...
 
  | momothereal wrote:
  | They own https://www.google.com.gi/ though.
 
  | GordonS wrote:
  | If they _really_ wanted it, presumably they could setup a shell
  | company in Gibraltar using a local agent?
 
| schappim wrote:
| I love this line from the article "but when everyone suspected
| that the server had crashed, as is often the case..."
| 
| That must be a pretty big server!
 
| _acco wrote:
| Among other exploits, you could generate an SSL cert and harvest
| cookies. All visitors would have to do is load your site in their
| browser. Right?
 
| Rohpakle wrote:
| However, minutes later after the manoeuvre, it was confirmed that
| Google has already recovered the domain.
| 
| I'm confused. It seems to me that this article just through some
| lines in it without further explanation.
 
  | solids wrote:
  | Nobody knows what happened. Last night someone posted on
  | twitter that google.com.ar was not working, then another one
  | posted a screenshot from the Argentinean domain provider
  | highlighting that the domain was registered by a random guy.
  | Few hours later google.com.ar started working again, probably a
  | single phone call from Google resolved the issue.
 
| Forbo wrote:
| > >According to the Open Data Cordoba group (which is dedicated
| to tracking expired Argentine domains) Google's domain had not
| expired and, in fact, the expiration date was in July. But the
| group too was unable to explain what had happened or why.
| 
| Ouch. I think someone's going to have some explaining to do in
| the post-mortem.
 
  | packetslave wrote:
  | Yeah, MarkMonitor is not going to have a good time on this one
  | (they're the company Google, and a bunch of other high-profile
  | companies) use for domain management and tracking. They're
  | supposed to prevent this kind of thing from happening.
 
    | emmelaich wrote:
    | It's not known whether Google or the AR NIC made the mistake.
 
| QUFB wrote:
| It's not quite google.ar, but I'm still trying to figure out what
| to do with https://gnu.gl/
 
  | jshmrsn wrote:
  | If GNU Project ever wanted to run a free Google alternative,
  | GNUgl at gnu.gl would be a great fit.
 
  | livre wrote:
  | Until a year or two ago (can't remember exactly) it wasn't
  | possible to register a "naked" .ar domain and they were
  | reserved for very special cases (government mostly). It had to
  | be a .com.ar or .org.ar etc.
 
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| I see this kind of stuff happening all the time; some of them
| being high-profile sites too (e.g. "Keep America Great" got taken
| from Trump). Is there some website that monitors domain
| expiration and sends out alerts or is this mostly lone-actors?
| I'm always surprised by how quickly they move in on the domain
 
  | folli wrote:
  | It's called Domain drop catching or Domain sniping. There are
  | tools available that do just that.
  | 
  | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_drop_catching
 
  | wrs wrote:
  | There are many such services, which will not only alert you but
  | automatically try to buy the domain for you. Search for "domain
  | backorders".
 
    | y-c-o-m-b wrote:
    | Oh wow even GoDaddy provides the service. Interesting.
    | Thanks!
 
      | sixothree wrote:
      | I would assume that would just give them more information
      | for their domain broker services to raise the price of the
      | domain.
 
        | jfrunyon wrote:
        | Sure, but so does doing a whois or an NS check. Plenty of
        | registrars and registries are known to have abused such
        | data in the past.
 
      | lostlogin wrote:
      | Keeping it classy as always.
 
  | eli wrote:
  | yeah but all the good ones are automatically reregistered way
  | faster than you could click the Buy button.
 
| batch12 wrote:
| I wonder how long it would have taken to be noticed if he
| replicated DNS and sat on it for a while. Better yet, how long if
| he had redirected or cloned the site.
 
  | throwaway3699 wrote:
  | Google gets enough DNS traffic that I doubt you could just _sit
  | on it_ for very long. Not without an expensive bill.
 
    | 101008 wrote:
    | But what if you just point to original Google DNS servers?
 
      | jaywalk wrote:
      | Not sure why you're getting downvoted. Setting the NS
      | records to their original values would make the whole thing
      | transparent unless you dug into the domain ownership.
 
    | kuroguro wrote:
    | Wouldn't most of it get cached downstream tho?
 
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| somebody actually posted it as an 'ask hn' last night! I'm
| actually physically hurting right now. I wonder how much google
| will pay to get their precious domain back.
 
  | whitehouse3 wrote:
  | Can't they forcefully take it? [0]
  | 
  | [0]:
  | https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/cybersquatting-2013-05...
 
    | FridayoLeary wrote:
    | what is this then?
    | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26907303
 
| yosito wrote:
| Meanwhile, I can't even figure out how to buy domains with my
| name in them from people who just buy them and sit on them.
 
  | amelius wrote:
  | The internet's implementation of name resolving is wrong.
  | 
  | If you type "apple.com" you should get a disambiguation page
  | saying "Did you mean the grocery store, the record company, or
  | the computer company?" and from there you can reach the desired
  | website. Somewhat like how it works in Wikipedia.
  | 
  | Unlike land, names are not a scarcity and can be shared. So why
  | pretend they are like land?
 
    | throwaway3699 wrote:
    | Land can be shared just like names, and the reality is
    | there's only so many disambiguations one can learn. Even with
    | that ability, consumers are only going to remember one
    | apple.com.
 
    | JoshTriplett wrote:
    | > names are not a scarcity and can be shared
    | 
    |  _Domain names_ cannot be effectively shared between non-
    | cooperating entities. Someone has to own the DNS A
    | /AAAA/CNAME/etc records, and be able to change them at will.
    | They have to point to someone's server. It doesn't matter
    | what technological implementation underpins name resolution,
    | it's a fundamentally important property that it must be
    | possible to have exclusive ownership of a domain name.
    | 
    | If I'm trying to reach my bank, I need to _know_ that I 'm
    | talking to my bank, and we have a whole technological stack
    | designed to ensure that, including cryptographic
    | authentication and public logs (Certificate Transparency) to
    | make sure nobody can secretly tamper with that
    | authentication.
    | 
    | Any system that cannot provide such authentication is not a
    | viable naming scheme.
    | 
    | There's a long-standing concept that has been discussed many
    | times that naming could be based _entirely_ on that
    | cryptographic authentication, without having any kind of
    | "human-readable" name at all. However, such a system would
    | not solve the full problem that needs solving; it would just
    | mean there would then need to be a _separate_ directory
    | system to help people find the server they actually want and
    | then talk securely to that server.
 
    | scubbo wrote:
    | This is a very interesting statement. My gut reaction is "no,
    | that's wrong!", but I can't quite articulate _why_ that's
    | wrong - so, please consider this reply in the spirit of an
    | auto-Socratic dialogue, rather than an argument intended to
    | dissuade you.
    | 
    | You're right that names themselves are not truly scarce*, but
    | "convenience of being referenced by a name on the internet"
    | most certainly _is_ a scarce resource. There can only be one
    | "first resolved entity" - this is why companies invest in
    | SEO**. So it seems like what you're actually arguing for (and
    | apologies if I'm misrepresenting you here!) is a situation
    | where it's not possible for the average internet consumer to
    | directly reference a particular domain, but rather where all
    | name-resolution queries _have to_ go through a hypothetical
    | unbiased "top-level" search engine - one which indexes not
    | documents, but domains. Is that right?
    | 
    | If that's the case, then we've then opened up several other
    | problems: - who decides the order in which those results get
    | displayed? You may not think it matters, but I can promise
    | you that NEO ("Name Engine Optimization") would then become a
    | lucrative industry. Apple-the-computer-company certainly
    | wouldn't stand for being the third result for apple.com - how
    | do direct links and bookmarks work? - If there's some sub-
    | identifier ("apple.computer.com" resolves directly), then who
    | assigns those sub-identifiers? If ICAAN or a similar
    | organization, then we're right back at the current situation,
    | but one level deeper - the IT company for the Apple grocery
    | store would be fighting (with their wallet) against the Apple
    | Computer company. - If direct links only work via IP
    | addresses, well, the average consumer wouldn't be delighted
    | with that; nor would print advertisers trying to share a
    | human-memorable address
    | 
    | It's a tempting idea, for certain, but I can't see a way of
    | implementing this that doesn't immediately give rise to the
    | same problems one layer deeper. You've clearly thought about
    | this more than I have, though, so I look forward to hearing
    | more about it!
    | 
    | * though to an extent, they are; since there can not
    | practically be multiple items of a given name within a
    | category - if every man was named John, then we would need
    | some other way to distinguish them, and so
    | "John<-identifier>" would _become_ their name
    | 
    | ** where, here, the "name" is a search term rather than a
    | specific one-to-one address - and, yes, I recognize that
    | that's not _quite_ the same thing
 
  | [deleted]
 
  | danielmeskin wrote:
  | If you figure it out let me know.
 
| cyberlab wrote:
| If you're looking for domains potentially getting 'dropped' by
| Google, look no further:
| https://infogalactic.com/info/List_of_Google_domains
 
  | HowardStark wrote:
  | Took a quick glance and noticed that this article is claiming
  | "duck.com" is owned by Google, even though it redirects to
  | DuckDuckGo.
  | 
  | That domain has Namecheap's Whois Guard enabled, so there's no
  | registrant information. However, I'm still inclined to think
  | that it isn't Google's domain since the NS records for
  | "duck.com" point to "nsXX.quack-dns.com"...
 
    | Sephr wrote:
    | iirc this was originally owned by Google and then given to
    | DDG.
 
      | butt__hugger wrote:
      | This is correct. It used to redirect to Google.
 
    | jordanmoconnor wrote:
    | Wouldn't it be funny if DDG was actually Google.
 
      | julienfr112 wrote:
      | Even more funny, what about google financing a competiting
      | browser ? wait ...
 
      | vmception wrote:
      | Hilarious even, but I wouldn't be mad though
 
      | cigaser wrote:
      | It is using Bing engine and data.
 
        | magnusmundus wrote:
        | ...among other sources. "Over four hundred" [1] of them.
        | 
        | [1] https://help.duckduckgo.com/results/sources/
 
        | Seirdy wrote:
        | Those apply only to non-organic results (instant answers,
        | zero-click info). Organic results are proxied from Bing
        | (or sometimes Yandex) verbatim.
        | 
        | DuckDuckGo's crawlers only fetch icons and scrape data
        | for some of their instant answers.
 
        | anoonmoose wrote:
        | That would make it even funnier!
 
        | cigaser wrote:
        | It is not a joke. There is a partnership with Microsoft.
        | Search engines are hard.
 
        | kortilla wrote:
        | Whoosh. The joke is that Google owns DDG despite it being
        | backed by Bing.
 
    | celestialcheese wrote:
    | duck.com was owned by google from an acquisition in 2010.
    | 
    | It was sold to DDG in 2018
    | https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/12/18137369/duckduckgo-
    | duck...
 
    | gtirloni wrote:
    | _In December 2018, it was reported that Google transferred
    | ownership of the domain name Duck.com to DuckDuckGo. It is
    | not known what price, if any, DuckDuckGo paid for the domain
    | name_
    | 
    | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo
 
      | sneak wrote:
      | Being a "competitor" that a monopolist can point to as faux
      | evidence of their not-monopoly status is far beyond any
      | simple integer price.
 
        | vmception wrote:
        | Especially since we need BigNumber to represent the real
        | dollar value at stake
 
  | gtirloni wrote:
  | Does anyone know what cobrasearch.com was?
 
    | FredPret wrote:
    | It's like Find My iPhone but much scarier
 
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| How was he able to register the domain months before it was
| supposed to expire? Did he hack the registrar itself?
 
  | judge2020 wrote:
  | Either the registrar or the registry - the registry seems more
  | likely as there are no requirements to running a country code
  | TLD's registry on account of ICANN not wanting to anger any
  | government or seem like they have power over 'government
  | property'.
 
    | jfrunyon wrote:
    | There are also very little requirements to running a
    | registrar...
 
| sixothree wrote:
| > The technical term for this type of manoeuvre is called
| "Cybersquatting" in English.
 
  | canada_dry wrote:
  | Yah. This gives him some bragging rights at most. If he hacked
  | something, it'll be a different story though.
 
  | 0xdba wrote:
  | No, that's buying a domain in the hopes someone will want it in
  | the future. This was "domain sniping".
 
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Out of curiosity, I queried about 100 DoH servers (open
| resolvers) for "google.com.ar". Every A record returned contained
| an IP address registered to Google.
 
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(page generated 2021-04-22 23:00 UTC)