A long long time ago, I do remember that Verisign did something with the .com namespace so that unregistered domain queries got redirected to a default webpage they hosted (no doubt with plans to monetize). My memory is hazy but I've included some links below.
There was a massive backlash for obvious reasons and they reversed the change quite quickly.
Whenever I use Chrome and it redirects a legitimate website URL that I've hosted locally to their search engine as a search query... I feel a sense of disappointment with the IT community, in that we let Google hijack everything in a similar way without much criticism at all.
> Whenever I use Chrome and it redirects a legitimate website URL that I've hosted locally to their search engine as a search query...
German internet provider T-Online pretty much does the same by default. When you enter a domain without a DNS record, they will redirect you to one of their pages.
I think it's something like "That domain does not exist" at the top and then their "news" site which is plastered with ads and more.
Shady tactics, but you can disable that in their settings when they are your ISP.
There was a massive backlash for obvious reasons and they reversed the change quite quickly.
Whenever I use Chrome and it redirects a legitimate website URL that I've hosted locally to their search engine as a search query... I feel a sense of disappointment with the IT community, in that we let Google hijack everything in a similar way without much criticism at all.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2003/09/2824-2/
[2] https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2008/05/verisign-gets-...