I’ll try to be civil, but… they are

I’ll try to be civil, but… they are was Originally Posted on September 9, 2006 by lavarock

It is rare for me to get so worked up that I want to throw things. That happened tonight.

I have been an earthlink customer since the dialup days of Mindspring and still have a mindspring email address.

Recently, Earthlink rolled out what they say is an “enhancement” yet many people are very upset; me included.

A few months ago, Verisign tried a similar stunt (worldwide) now Earthlink is just irritating their own users. Here is how.

The Internet was designed that if you mistyped a domain name, an error would be returned to your browser that caused your browser to say that the website does not exist. earthlink, is a move to increase revenue, now displays a webpage instead of sending the error message. The webpage says “The web site address you entered could not be found.
Please try the related content suggestions and paid advertisements below, or try another search.” Note the PAID ADS!!!

Many people are reporting that this webpage (rather than returning an error to your browser) breaks long-standing protocols and procedures of the internet. An Earthlink employee keeps telling us this is good for us and they are working to “enhance” things so they work smoother. He seems to miss the point that many of us are ready to jump ship.

Imagine a friend calls you and instead of your telephone ringing, your phone announces “Hey John is calling you, but first, how about a Budweiser?” Imagine that while they roll oyut such a service that answering machines stop working (because they are expecting a ring and not a vloice announcement). That is not much different than what we are getting now with this new “service”.

Earthlink has no idea why we are so mad, mad enough to jump ship.

I spent half an hour on the phone with their technical support trying to explain what was happening. The guy in India had no idea. He laso had no internet access through Earthlink so I could not even give him an example of what was happening.

If you are an Earthlink/Mindspring customer, you may already be able to see this in your area. Just type in a domain name that does not exist like http://www.ryryryryryry.com. Normally you would just see your browser report the domain does not exist. Instead, I see ads for University of Phoenix and Gametap. Sometimes I get a popup to install software like Flash. What I should NOT see is an error page from Earthlink with ads!

If you don’t have Earthlink, you should be able to see what I’m talking about here: http://earthlink-help.net/?d=error_earthlink-bf&q=ryryryry.com

Earthlink, you have turned EVIL and if you do not offer an opt-out or stop this insane idea, I will be one of the many who are voting with their feet!

Note: you can read more about this here: http://blogs.earthlink.net/2006/08/handling_dead_domains_1.php )