EarthLink Establishes Their Own "Site Finder"

Guppy06 writes "Last week, instead of a regular DNS error, EarthLink's DNS servers started to return a redirect to earthlink-help.net, a site that bears a close resemblance to VeriSign's much-maligned Site Finder, to their subscribers. According to their official blog at Earthling, "By presenting users with contextual help based upon the non-existent domain the user entered, we believe we are improving the EarthLink user experience with a system that will not interfere with other network processes." Most of the responses in said blog posting aren't positive."

Profit is the Motive

[eldavojohn]

I visited the earthlink help page and noticed that it contained four things.

1. A box showing suggested search terms
2. A box in which I could search (through Yahoo!) for my page.
3. Two banner ads.

When I enter in a term, say 'guitar' [earthlink-help.net], I get a page with yet more ads and sponsored links but still directed through earthlink help to Yahoo!

I wasn't born yesterday, I understand the concepts of paid search, sponsored links & banner ads. They generate revenue and insult me. They waste real estate on websites and obscure my information that I would prefer to harvest un assaulted by sales pitches.

I'm betting I'm not the first to say this, but this is insane.

If they wanted to be 'helpful' they would provide you with some sort of new service. In this solution, they are simply deciding which search engine you will use and cashing in off of it also. If we want to search for another answer, I think we know where to go. If you doubt our abilities to select a preferred search engine, at least give us some choices. Do you know what happens in Firefox when I pull down the search engine on the upper right? I can select from a number of sites.

"By presenting users with contextual help based upon the non-existent domain the user entered, we believe we are improving the EarthLink user experience with a system that will not interfere with other network processes."

You're not improving anything, you're laughing all the way to the bank.

The difference is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Earthlink subscribers can opt by not being Earthlink subscribers any longer. When Verisign did it, it affected everyone because they've been granted a monopoly on certain domain extensions.

Who are these people?

[Anonymous Coward]

By presenting users with contextual help based upon the non-existent domain the user entered, we believe we are improving the EarthLink user experience with a system that will not interfere with other network processes.

Anybody who authorized this on a technical level should be packing groceries, not presiding over an ISP's infrastructure.

Re:Voting with one's dollars is not always effecti

[tchuladdiass]

Simple. Continue to use Earthlink, but don't use their DNS. Just run your own dns server locally. Or, point to another open dns server.

Re:The "Unix Way" vs "Everyone Else"

[marcello_dl]

This is not about the unix way or the apple way. This is about the Computer Science way: returning an error when an error occurs. Dealing with the error is an user agent, not an ISP responsibility. Earthlink should have made this opt-in (they can spare a coupe IPs for a couple more DNS servers, can't they). I run PPC linux and mac on linux over it occasionally, so I know what you probably meant, it still does not apply here.

Stay In the Box

[Doc Ruby]

The place for offering "help" in the user interface is in the client software. Perhaps the DNS error needs a metadata field for offering messages, perhaps hyperlinked, for exception handling. But those must be presented by the user agent, like the browser, not tricking the browser into "passthru" to server misdirection. That violates the DNS specs. And makes that essential global system vulnerable to unpredicted failures when dependant systems get nonstandard results.

These ISPs attract marketing people with dreams of empire and ignorance of Internet. Execs put them in power over the engineers, and just rip across the careful system designs that make the Net work. Then they cry when their stuff doesn't work, and blame the engineers.

But they compete with each other on how well their stuff works. As long as we can switch ISPs among a pool with critical mass size, they'll exploit each others' weaknesses to grab customers. These "DNS hijacks" are going to be with us forever, avoidable only while we have a choice between independent, competing ISPs.

Re:So what?

[jolyonr]

Earthlink aren't providing meaningful information to customers - they're just trying to make money.

Of course, that's what businesses are for, so as you say, if they want to do it, they should be entirely entitled to do so. However:

a) It's not fair on those who have paid for an existing service to have the nature of this service changed on them without warning - many people feel they are now getting a poorer service.

b) They should at the very least have provided an opt-out system for those who prefer untainted DNS that works in the way the internet standards require it to work. Then people with firewall, anti-spam or other systems that this change breaks wouldn't be so up in arms.

If my ISP did this, I'd leave them. Luckily my ISP is more sane.

Jolyon

except the results are not useful

[krell]

"The Unix Way zealots will tell you that undermining this dirt road area of the internet by returning useful results"

Except that these results are not "useful", and are even less useful than a simple honest error message. When I type in a wrong URL, I don't want to be punished by attempts to redirect me to a useless second-rate search service. I just want enter the correct URL and go about my business. Such redirections to useless sites are like putting deep mudpits in the dirt road.

"There's also no technical reason why Earthlink needs to go ahead with something like this when search engines are already built into most modern browsers."

That's another lousy idea. When you want to search, you go to a search engine site. What could be easier than that? Search engines, like email clients, have no business being built into browsers.

Re:The "Unix Way" vs "Everyone Else"

[krell]

"That may be an easy answer for you, but is it also the right choice for Joe User?"

Why would Joe User want a tool where you tell it to do one thing, and it does another instead?

"You are already unable to give a valid address, do you think you should also be expected to be able to decipher what a 404 error means?"

I'm not so much hung on on the error being EXACTLY a 404. For all I care, it can be a simple and easy "This page does not exist". That's all.

Re:The "Unix Way" vs "Everyone Else"

[giorgiofr]

Um yeah you're right, come to think of it, my ISP should probably just go all the way and silently reroute my connections to the destination they think fits me better... It's not like the end user knows what he's doing.
*megatokyo CTRL+ENTER*
*out pops www.wanna buy a house at house.com? you fit the demographic perfectly. you probably wanted to buy a house, right? you didn't really want to read your favourite webcomic*

Re:Profit is the Motive

[geminidomino]

Google doesn't fuck with the RFCs to make its profit.

Re:What's the problem?

[b0s0z0ku]

When you dial a non-existant telephone number you get an ear piercing tone, you have to hang up, and start all over again.

Or we get a recording "doo-dah-dee. We're sorry - the number you have reached has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try again."

We don't get "This recording is sponsored by Gromyko's Widget Works of Belle PPlain, Wisconsin, North American Wireless, and Joe's Pizza. You have dialed 555-1234. If you meant 554-1234, Smith, John, press 1, if you meant 556-1234, Mierzwiak, James, press 2, or if you meant 555-2233, Yung, M., press 3?"

Not to give the phone company ideas or anything :/

-b.

Re:The "Unix Way" vs "Everyone Else"

[TClevenger]

On the HTTP side, if you get returned a page instead of a "server not found" error, that mistyping becomes a part of your browser history. From then on, any autocomplete you might rely on will return you the misspelling, since it was a "valid" page.

Re:Voting with one's dollars is not always effecti

[westlake]

Simple. Continue to use Earthlink, but don't use their DNS. Just run your own dns server locally. Or, point to another open dns server.

how many of Earthlink's customers do you suppose heve the foggiest notion of what a DNS server is or does or knows how to set up an alternative?

Re:The "Unix Way" vs "Everyone Else"

[mdhoover]

Cool, so you wont mind folks redirecting all the wonderful new mountains of spam to your server which now gets through because forged bogus sending domains now resolve. There is a reason you dont fuck with the naming service...

the web is not the internet...

[ThwartedEfforts]

... but ISPs keep treating it like it is. If this kind of web-browser-error-messages-are-so-hard-to-understa nd-whaaaa-mommmy-hold-my-hand problem is so important, it can be done using proxying. Just have everyone who doesn't know how to type or can't understand the message "the domain ww.exampel.com couldn't be found" set the proxy settings in their browser. Or if you know your user base is composed of a bunch of idiots, use transparent proxying (obviously less effective with https traffic, but then significant changes to DNS, such as this is, effectively breaks https and what little trust you do get from https anyway). Can't proxy settings be served via DHCP or something too? This would provide all the advantages of dynamic configurations based on user/client machine (mac address) without even having to walk non-technical users through the process of changing their proxy settings in the browser.

On the other hand, if SRV records [ietf.org] had been used initially to publicize HTTP servers, then only those records would need to be overloaded to provide this kind of service. At least then it would be restricted to DNS queries related to HTTP traffic, although still not ideal.

Re:Voting with one's dollars is not always effecti

[valmont]

i'll tell you exactly how many: the number of earthlink customers that have the foggiest notion of what a DNS server is, and how to setup their own bind/named or djbdns instance, is equal to the number of earthlink customers who actually care about this issue, and don't actually want to be presented with relevant ads/search results. It's that easy.

Re:The "Unix Way" vs "Everyone Else"

[Drgnkght]

The problem is the browser is supposed to catch this "exception" that DNS threw. You requested a domain name lookup from DNS. DNS checked and replied that the request was invalid. On its way back to you the response was altered by Earthlink to send you somewhere you didn't request. How is this not a hijacking?

Re:The "Unix Way" vs "Everyone Else"

[Randseed]

Can you explain exactly how you are harmed by Earthlink's method? How does it hurt your computing experience? Why do you need an error page when an error occurs?

Uh:

# wget http://nonexistantdomain2342134.com/file.htm [nonexistan...342134.com]

What is supposed to happen is the domain doesn't resolve, so the operation fails. With Earthlink's moronic solution, I get their damned bullshit page instead of an error.

I'll use an ISP that doesn't shit all over the RFCs, thanks.