Yesterday, I noticed something peculiar when I accidentally misspelled the Microsoft domain name when entering it into my web browser. Instead of typing “microsoft.com”, I mistakenly typed “microsoft.cm” and instead of landing on the Microsoft.com home page I ending up on a site called Agoga.com.

I tried a few other well known domain names, replacing the .com with .cm, and got the same results – the Agoga.com web site.

Checking on the .cm top level domain I found that is the official domain name for the West African nation of Cameroon. Upon further investigation, I found that the mastermind behind the Agoga.com domain name is a Canadian resident named Kevin Ham, a famous domain squatter. It appears that he has made a business arrangement with the Cameroon nation to share in profits from ads placed on the Agoga.com site. And who hosts the ads - no other than the Yahoo! Publisher Network.

This reminds me of when the registry service VeriSign redirected nonexistent .com and .net domain names to the Site Finder search engine. ICANN forced VeriSign to quit the practice; however, ICANN has no regulatory control over two-letter country codes. The countries themselves get to decide what is ethical business practice and what is not. Makes you wonder if “Agoga” is nothing more than the Cameroon word for “sucker”.