Google has one yet another cyber battle, and in the process, has set a new precedent of sorts. It has defeated a cyber squatter that owned various domains based on common misspellings of the word "Google".The mega search companyhas won a ruling from the National Arbitration Forum giving it control ofthese domains. The NAF gave Google control of googkle.com, ghoogle.com, gfoogle.com and gooigle.com which had all been registered by Sergey Gridasov of St Petersburg, Russia.
The paneluncovered the factthat Gridasov registered the addresses after Google had launched. It ruled that the web addresses were confusingly similar to Google's and that Gridasov had no legitimate rights to them and was using them in bad faith by attempting to profit from misspellings of the branded term "Google". The domains sent browsers to web sites which tried to download trojans and spyware.
Gridasov did not respond to emails, faxes or letters from the arbitrators, so I'm assuming that he is not the most legitimate of businessmen. This case may lead to other arbitration disputes regarding the use of domain names that are similar to branded domains, so don't bother buying domains such as "yahop.com" or "msj.com".