Last week, we wrote about the best website ever, wwwtwitter.com. Okay, really it’s just a commonly mistyped domain that is currently redirecting to TechCrunch (and the owner actually updated it to direct to my article specifically — thanks, whoever you are!). In that post, I mentioned that while many big name brands own the wwwBRANDNAME.com domain and forward it to their real one, Microsoft did not own it for their current darling site, Bing.
At the time, the domain simply pointed to a page with a bunch of links. But since our story, the author decided to do something a bit more fun with it. As you can see now, wwwbing.com is a lovely page featuring a squatting troll. As a bonus, the troll is picking its nose and snot appears to be dripping out.
The site is titled, “Welcome to Walter Will Wawrinka Bing Fansite,” and it’s supposedly about an upcoming children’s book, due in 2010, that the author hopes “can be as successful as Harry Potter.”
So that might sound at least somewhat legitimate, right? But the funniest part is that Patrick McAuliffe, the owner of the domain also writes, “Feel free to do a search for Walter Will Wawrinka Bing in the following search engines,” and then goes on to list every single search engine besides Bing. Yes, even Lycos, AltaVista, and Excite. Naturally, Google is first.
What else is funny is that a query for “Walter Will Wawrinka Bing” provides absolutely no results at all on any of the search engines (though it may after this post!). This despite McAuliffe writing, “I know I have many fans around the world.”
In case you haven’t gotten the joke yet, let me spell it out: Walter Will Wawrika Bing.
I asked McAuliffe if Microsoft had reached out to him about acquiring the domain. Instead, it was McAuliffe who reached out to Microsoft with a proposal to sell the domain, and here is the response he got back:
Hello Patrick
I was asked by Bill’s team to personally respond to your proposal.
I am a business development manager that works with teams across
Microsoft to manage a review process of unsolicited proposals. We
provide resources, feedback and next steps.I have forwarded your information to our domain registrations group
for their consideration. This group works directly with the various
business groups on domain names and reviews proposals to determine
alignment with our business.I do want to help set your expectations on follow-up. Given the
volume of inquiries they receive, they generally only respond where
there is interest on behalf of the business group. Once submitted to
the team, I will no longer have any visibility regarding the
submission or its status. As a general guideline, if you have not
received a response within a two week timeframe, it is unlikely there
is any interest in your domain property.Thank you for your interest in Microsoft.
Gotta love that Microsoft bureaucracy. But maybe they don’t mind that a site a ton of people are probably mistyping, redirects to a picture of a squatting troll picking its nose that suggest you search on Google. Who knows.
I STILL don’t fully understand all the rules surrounding domains and when it’s legal to squat and when it’s not.
well i suppose he could argue it’s the name of his book
Not anymore. He just gave Microsoft the legal right to squash the domain because he tried to sell it to them, proving his use wasn’t legitimate.
Can’t believe Microsoft didn’t secure this domain. Oh wait, yes I can, it’s owned by Microsoft.
I kid the Microsoft…I suppose doing something with this domain is on their to-do-list, right along with explaining to people why they didn’t know/care that Bing translates to “sick” in Chinese.
exactly, this is all they need.
There is no legal right to squash anything.
The only legal play here is if “Bing” becomes a registered trademark in relation to “search” and this guy offers say a Google search bar on his site, then yes there is a legal stance here.
Otherwise, there is no legal issue legs to stand on to force this or any other person in said position to release such a domain.
“he could argue it’s the name of his book ”
Only if he can prove that he was working on the book before Microsoft came up with Bing.
Otherwise, Microsoft can simply go to WIPO can get his domain handed to Microsoft.
Its as simple as that.
WIPO was set up exactly for bullshit like this.
Microsoft didn’t come up with the word bing, CNN has a columnist called Stanley Bing, there’s a singer called Bing Crosby etc..
How is this bullshit?
It won’t be soon before MSFT shuts down wwwbing.com, they did to bing-new.com a while back.
http://bingdeve...-bing-news-com/
There’s 0 % chance that MS won’t get this via WIPO. This guy better be careful, he might get slapped with damages. oddly the traffic stats are all over the place.
http://siteanal....com/?metric=uv
Me neither. It was like the debate when google had to take companies to court for taking their name and registering it in different languages.
I cannot wait to see Adsense ads on that domain soon, that will be the kicker.
Running the search query for the exact phrase ["Walter Will Wawrinka Bing"] at 9:13 p.m. Pacific time:
- Google has 10 results (click to add “&filter=0″ to see all the results)
- Yahoo has 0 results
- Microsoft has 0 results
- Ask has 0 results
- Twitter has 0 results
- Blekko has a sock puppet
and they are all TechCrunch or our lovely content scrapping sites, right?
Currently 1300+ results for “wwwbing.com” and all are because of this post
Current result count on Google: “5,860″
That happens because wwwbing isn’t on Google:
http://www.goog...ite:wwwbing.com [0 results]
Actually as of 9:48 Pacific the domain wwwbing.com is in Google. The search ["Walter Will Wawrinka Bing"] returns the domain and the TechCrunch article at #1 and #2.
fear my techcrunch power.
Instigator of value.
shiver, I’d forgotten about that song…
+1
That picture is from the Gnome book, by the way, to attribute the artist Riein Poortvliet ( http://www.amaz...n/dp/0810909650 )
Same thing I thought, yeah. Nostalgia…
Defo proof that he’s not working on a book (as if we’d need more proof =]), since that drawing is over 3 decades old. Apart from drawing attention from Microsoft, he might also get into some copyright party.
OH, MY EYES BUUURN!
It’s the perfect 1998 website.
Oh, it would be nifty to throw some nice javascript stardust/rainfall special effects over that page.
CURSOR TRAIL MAGIKS
Why. would. you. give. him. such. an. idea? Now, he’s going to do it.
/Think of all the people who use No Script…
This is awesomely hilarious. There’s some broken HTML in the source which seems rather bingy too.
I wonder where that troll illustration came from. I like it.
Hi, Siegler, have you made a proposal to “wwwtechcrunch.com” which is a squatter site copying your site’s domain name? With about 20 million page views per month for your site, courtesy spelling mistakes, wwwtechcrunch.com must also be getting a good number of page views which must be driving the ads displayed on that site. While Google Trends for Websites does not show any visit data for wwwtechcrunch.com, my quick check at alexa.com shows that wwwtechcrunch.com has a 7-day average rank of 225,702 amongst all sites on the Internet! And, hold your breath, even BBC has committed a similar spelling mistake and has referred to your web address as “wwwtechcrunch.com” by conveniently forgetting the DOT in their web page at http://news.bbc...ogy/7993186.stm !!! You’ll have to view page source of this BBC page to view this mistake.
Funny stuff, and perhaps the cleverest domain squatting evar. The troll illustration that was stolen sans credit wasn’t clever though. It is a famous children’s book. Lame. Let me repeat that from my heart for you silly and successful TechCrunch gooses (kudos on your success btw!!) .. You are Lame.
Good Night, you quota driven content Machine, Sincerely -
The Whining Hobo, Chief of Angst and Grapes.
PS. Please do look into that illustration. I really doubt it’s commons, but even so, credit is due big time. (I won’t show you who did it, because you are a donkey).
PPS: Invent something that exists in the physical world, and then manufacture it here in the United States. Make some sawdust like me. You have know idea what I mean by that, and that relates to why you have no idea why I think you are such a squeaky pussy.
@ Nycteris – why do that for them?
Have u seen its metatags keywords?? wth? u gotta love them lol; (Sex,Playboy,Women,Dating,Aliens,Mars,Racing,America,Europe,Mortgages,Diet,Titanic,Elvis,Murder…)
Lol:)…its bullshit
This story proves that reality is often stranger than fiction indeed. Thousands of smart people at Microsoft, and no one thought to reserve that domain? If that’s the case, let the first squatter prevail!
Walter Will Wawrica Bing, I love it.
Not clever.
By offering the domain for sale to Microsoft, he pretty much lost the case, and if Microsoft want the domain, they can simply claim it via quite a straightforward procedure.
Yep. Exactly.
In addition to the obvious domain squatting, this site says “fail,” if you’ll excuse the cliché, on so many levels.
Anyone who publicly says that they hope to be “the next Harry Potter,” the “next Michael Crichton,” the “next Robert Jordan,” or the next anything is not conducting themselves professionally as a writer.
Aside from the fact that a book that sounds so obviously juvenile cannot possibly be as successful as a series with nearly universal appeal, when you try to compare yourself to a successful author your respect goes right out the window.
Anything that’s claiming to be the “next something” is generally not worth the attention. Success in literature is born from being unique and holding a wide audience’s attention, not in playing “me too.”
I wonder how I can get free publicity of a site I have lol Stories like this just makes me think “wtf?”
Just looking at the page’s meta tags says a lot about whatever the author wanted to accomplish (ie – a hit from any search engine out there on almost all popular topics):
sorry, here is is w/o the html tags:
meta content=”Sport,Bing,Google,Yahoo,Sex,Food,Travel,PC games,Computers,Iphones,Playboy,Wine,Drink,Women,Dating,Aliens,Mars,Racing,Football,Soccer,Dancing,America,Europe,Mortgages,Business,TV,Radio,Newspapers,Cars,Insurance,Diet,Titanic,Elvis,Finance,Murder,” name=”keywords”
meta content=”Sport,Bing,Google,Yahoo,Sex,Food,Travel,PC games,Computers,Iphones,Playboy,Wine,Drink,Women,Dating,Aliens,Mars,Racing,Football,Soccer,Dancing,America,Europe,Mortgages,Business,TV,Radio,Newspapers,Cars,Insurance,Diet,Titanic,Elvis,Finance,Murder,” name=”description”
Squeaky Pussy..LOL Sounds about right.
Hilarious. Searched for “Walter Will Wawrinka Bing” on Bing and got 7 hits!
so not done.
seems like you filter “code”;
I was talking about:
meta name=”keywords” content=”Sport,Bing,Google,Yahoo,Sex,Food,Travel,PC games,Computers,Iphones,Playboy,Wine,Drink,Women,Dating,Aliens,Mars,Racing,Football,Soccer,Dancing,America,Europe,Mortgages,Business,TV,Radio,Newspapers,Cars,Insurance,Diet,Titanic,Elvis,Finance,Murder,”
meta name=”description” content=”Sport,Bing,Google,Yahoo,Sex,Food,Travel,PC games,Computers,Iphones,Playboy,Wine,Drink,Women,Dating,Aliens,Mars,Racing,Football,Soccer,Dancing,America,Europe,Mortgages,Business,TV,Radio,Newspapers,Cars,Insurance,Diet,Titanic,Elvis,Finance,Murder,”
hmm… testing social media stuff.
Yaeks.. looks like that troll needs some hanky!
worthless property. i can think of about alot more serious domaining going on than this garbage. this puts a bad rap on trolls. some trolls are good people and would never be involved with such nonsense.
I suspect he knows that Microsoft will be able to take it from him. When they do so, the bad publicity for Microsoft that this story will generate has potential to give him even more traffic.
Given that the green matches the green at http://www.register365.com/
I have to wonder if it’s all a clever way to promote http://www.register365.com/
Oh, wait…
The green matches? Are you colour blind?
Is it just me or is the troll really gone?
gone. now talking about a children’s book:
“Walter Will Wawrinka Bing is my new childrens book which is due out on the 5th April 2010. I know I have many fans around the world. I hope Walter Will Wawrinka Bing can be as successful as Harry Potter
God bless America,
Patrick from Ireland”
whois:
Domain name: WWWBING.COM
Created on: 2009-03-26
Updated on: 2009-10-12
Expires on: 2010-03-26
Registrant Name: PATRICK MCAULIFFE
Contact: Patrick McAuliffe
Registrant Address: Siena House Knockanish East, The Spa Tralee Kerry
Registrant City: Ireland
Registrant Postal Code: 353
Registrant Country: IE
Administrative Contact Organization: Namesco Limited
Administrative Contact Name: Domain Administrator
Administrative Contact Address: Acton House, Perdiswell Park
Administrative Contact City: Worcester
Administrative Contact Postal Code: WR3 7GD
Administrative Contact Country: GB
Administrative Contact Email:
Administrative Contact Tel: +44 845 3633630
Technical Contact Organization: Namesco Limited
Technical Contact Name:
Technical Contact Address: Acton House, Perdiswell Park
Technical Contact City: Worcester
Technical Contact Postal Code: WR3 7GD
Technical Contact Country: GB
Technical Contact Email:
Technical Contact Phone: +44 845 3633630
Technical Contact Fax: +44 845 363 3631
Primary Name Server Hostname: NS0.REG365.NET
Secondary Name Server Hostname: NS1.REG365.NET
Same guy has also registered Googl7.com
He just changed the picture
Just did a Google search for “Walter Will Wawrika Bing” and Microsoft is throwing up Adwords under the term now…..gotta love people with money to burn.
Nice article!
So, would he be violating copyright if he put up an google Adsense parked page? I’m sure he would make a killing!
‘A troll squats on wwwbing.com- Literally’.
Not quite. Literally would be a physical troll actually physically crouching over a web domain- perhaps to take a $hit.
Hrm, I have to think that the domain squatter in question, Patrick McAuliffe, must’ve realized that had he simply parked the domain “wwwbing.com” with a page of sponsored links, it would seriously weaken his case should Microsoft ever try to claim the domain either through UDRP (uniform dispute resolution policy) binding arbitration or through the court system. By making up a simple page with apparently “legitimate” content about the main character in children’s story “under development” where the character’s initials happen to be “W.W.W. Bing”, I think he’s hoping the UDRP panel or court justice would more likely side in his favour.
It may help a bit, but I don’t think the intelligent jurist(s) will have any problem seeing through that thin veil of deceit on the part of McAuliffe. The key question will probably surround prior usage of the domain and character’s name before Microsoft launched the Bing search engine publicly. If, in fact, McAuliffe registered “wwwbing.com” before Microsoft launched Bing publicly and he had legitimate content before Microsoft’s bing was “birthed” to the world, then I think McAuliffe has a strong case.
I have my doubts though. The fact he approached Microsoft indicates he’s likely a greedy, money-grubbing, domain squatting whore.
Cheers,
Doug Mehus
twitter.com/dmehus
The thing is, now that this post has put this TM Typo on the map, Microsoft (who I assume will in some capacity see this) will have to be very careful of it’s next move. Buying this domain would only send a message that we (everyone reading this) can infringe on it’s marks, and yet still make money selling back something that is rightfully theirs. If Microsoft buys this OBVIOUS bad faith name, I think we should all take that as a message that we can all profit off of Microsoft’s hard work.
Microsoft, are you reading this?
Seems like monetizing the domain in some way might be more beneficial than hoping Microsoft will buy it.
Looks like someone is selling wwwTechCrunch.com
http://www.sedo...5&et_lid=65
Well something happened, because the links to other search engines are gone, and this is there now:
This site has no affiliation with the search engine Bing.com
You can find them at http://www.bing.com.
Sounds like someone made him afraid of something.
I don’t really think this will make a difference. People know how to typel.