Pity Ohio machine maker Universal Tube. Their website UTube.com has been getting crushed under the weight of millions of misdirected traffic hits from YouTube.com, and they're not happy. They've had to move their site five times to keep up with the number of surfers they're now getting and have even had to shut it down for several days. So they're suing, asking YouTube.com to stop using that name (like that's gonna happen), or to pay Universal's cost for setting up a new domain. They say the've lost business because its customers have had site access difficulties.
"We were there first by 10 years," [Ralph] Girkins said. [Universal Tube's president].
The confusion took off a couple of months ago, Girkins said. The company, with just 17 employees, got 68 million hits on its site in August, making it one of the most popular manufacturing Web sites.
The site shut down in early October just before Google Inc. announced plans to buy YouTube for $1.65 billion. It took several days before it was back up.
Ohio company with similar-sounding Web site sues YouTube - AP via Mercury News
They need to get themselves some advertisers to take advantage. Although suing directly might net them more.
Posted by: Jed | November 02, 2006 at 10:09 AM
Correct me if I am wrong, but it sounds like a great opportunity - How much is a site worth that gets millions of hits thanks to someone else being well known? Open a new site for your customers and pay for it with what you could either sell the name for, or take advantage and use the site to generate revenue.
Posted by: Jeff | November 02, 2006 at 12:25 PM