Google appears to have lost its German domain name to a cybersquatter after forgetting to renew the registration for google.de.
The page now directs you to a holding page at Goneo, a web hosting company. The domain’s WHOIS entry now reads:
[Holder]
Type: ORG
Name: favo
[...]
Country: DE
Remarks: ID #8616
Changed: 2004-10-27T10:45:06+02:00
Favo’s website describes it as a company specialising in registering recently-expired domains. The company’s administrative contact — like Google.de’s right now — is one Mario Micklisch of Wiesbaden.
As Wortfeld reported, it’s fairly common for big online property owners to forget about their domains. Microsoft once had the same thing happen to Hotmail.co.uk, and WashingtonPost.com also got lost once.
Update: Something else is going on as well. As user Atari is pointing out in comments all over the place, German web-based WHOIS tool Serversniff.de (and other WHOIS lookups based in Germany) show some unusual results for Google.com:
Server Name: GOOGLE.COM.ZZZZZ.GET.LAID.AT.WWW.SWINGINGCOMMUNITY.COM
IP Address: 69.41.185.195
Registrar: INNERWISE, INC. D/B/A ITSYOURDOMAIN.COM
Whois Server: whois.itsyourdomain.com
Referral URL: http://www.itsyourdomain.com
Server Name: GOOGLE.COM.ZOMBIED.AND.HACKED.BY.WWW.WEB-HACK.COM
IP Address: 217.107.217.167
Registrar: ONLINENIC, INC.
Whois Server: whois.OnlineNIC.com
Referral URL: http://www.OnlineNIC.com
etc…
English-language WHOIS tools, however, show Google owned by a Mountain View, California, corporation of the same name. Whatever is going on seems to be localised to Germany for the moment.
Update: Google.de seems to be pointing at Google again.
Update: See also SearchEngineLand, Google Blogscoped.
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You should take care to remove the address information to not get into trouble for unauthorized publication of private data… with denic.de, it’s “secured” by at least a disclaimer page, here it’s open to everybody and his bot!
cheers
Although I’m not familiar with the notion of “unauthorized publication of private data”, it’s the middle of the night and I can’t think of a public interest reason why I should be republishing someone’s personal address (if that’s what it is). I’m taking it down (for now).
it looks crazy… i checked the whois of google.com and find new data like:
Server Name: GOOGLE.COM.PLZ.GIVE.A.PR8.TO.AUDIOTRACKER.NET
IP Address: 213.251.184.30
Registrar: OVH
Whois Server: whois.ovh.xxx
Server Name: GOOGLE.COM.HAS.LESS.FREE.PORN.IN.ITS.SEARCH.ENGINE .THAN.SECZY
IP Address: 209.187.114.130
Registrar: INNERWISE, INC. D/B/A ITSYOURDOMAIN
there is a guy that play with google!!!
everybody can check it for themselfes. as of now denic shows wrong data for google.de
but i didn´t find any official statement so far:
http://titusz.org/miscellaneous/google-germany-hijacked/
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The google.com whois details are no need for concern; these whois tools apparently display all domains and subdomains that contain “google.com” and many of them have nothing to do with the real Google. The results for microsoft.com are even more interesting.
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