With good domain names at a premium, Google (Nasdaq:GOOG) has decided to battle the abuse of companies who register names to test them out to see if they're able to generate significant revenue.
Called "domain name tasting," the individuals or companies buy up millions of Internet names, registering them so nobody else can use them, then drop them after a five-day period to get a refund. The idea is to find out which one works the best to generate revenue.
Obviously there has been a significant number of complaints from legitimate companies to acquire domain names tied up by those who never intend to use them.
What Google is doing to combat it is excluding these domain names from their Google Adsense program so money can't be generated during the temporary claim period. That will force the companies to keep the name and the cost of acquiring them, because they won't know until the grace period is over whether they're revenue producers or not.
I'm sure it's also a headache for Google to track all these bogus websites and domains with their Adsense program.
"We believe that this policy will have a positive impact for users and domain purchasers across the Web," Google spokesman Brandon McCormick said.
It's hard to know how many individuals and companies this will impact, but it is probably a lot higher than the general public realizes.
This will cause a huge decrease in the practice, as almost the entire premise behind it has just been cut out from under the practitioners of it.
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