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From initial inspection Google banning redirection looks more of a land grab and an attempt for them to lock in traffic to particular DNS servers. Is this really the case or is there a legitimate reason why URL redirection can potentially promote fraudulent activities?
 Some people have also suggested that the reason why Google is wanting to stop URL redirection is to make it more difficult for companies like ParkLogic and Above to continue offering their services. Since I don’t work at Above I’m not sure about their particular circumstances but for ParkLogic it’s actually a tweak of the systems and then business as usual. Given this is the case what’s Google really trying to solve?
Over the last six months there has been a massive increase in fraudulent activity and in particular a concerted effort by organised syndicates to rip the domain industry off. Much of the traffic being generated has been URL redirected a number of times to make it look cleaner for the anti-fraud systems. Locking in nameservers is an effort to solve this problem as it helps stop a lot of this type of activity by preserving original HTTP header information. The problem with stopping URL redirection is that it slams the door shut on a lot of untapped monetisation such as email and graphics traffic.
In my opinion stopping URL redirection is Google’s way of fighting against fraud and using a sledge-hammer to do it. Over the years it’s been proven that Google’s massive strength and also it’s Achilles heel has been its belief that pure technology can solve any problem. The advent of Facebook and social networks dented this philosophy and after years of neglect Google decided to join the social media revolution with Google+
The other way of solving the problems of fraud is by using a social reinforcing network and ensuring that the domain owners themselves are of the “right stuff”. If privacy were preserved as well as an ability to authenticate a person while monitoring the quality of their traffic then this would solve the vast majority of fraudulent traffic problems being experienced today. This is the problem that keeps me up at 3am in the morning as it’s a much more productive way of solving a whole lot of the problems that the domain industry has been wrestling with for years.
What’s going to be really interesting it to see whether Yahoo will capitalise on Google’s change and soak up a lot more traffic as its likely that a section of the Domaining community will rebel against the further restrictions.
The scenario brings to mind a scene from Star Wars where Princess Leia says to Darth Vader, “The more you squeeze the more Star Systems (ie. Domainers) will slip through your grasp.” Let’s hope that the Google empire is not full of Darths!
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We have never used any of our domains on a Google based domain feed we have always used Yahoo. And recently we decided to test about 1000 domains with a Google provider and all of these were domains that we have owned for at least 5 years. Do you know that 40% of the domains were banned by Google, not for TM, but because somebody used them in the past with url redirection and sent really bad traffic I assume. And as everybody knows Google doesn't unblock domains. So we have domains that are probably worth about $1M that Google won't accept because some fraudster decided to send traffic to Google pretending to be us.
This happens on a daily basis with Yahoo all of the time, because everybody offers url redirection. Would this actually solve the problem with people using other peoples domains, not really, but it should improve some of the problems. I know this would cause a problem for yours and above's business, but it will take like 30 seconds to make changes to your dns server to fix it.
Yahoo is not smart enough to implement something like this. They are hurting too much right now revenue wise. So I don't expect that you will see this on Yahoo anytime soon.