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Cybersquatting, the act of registering a domain name in hopes of selling it to someone who wants or needs it later, is, under the best of circumstances, still considered a fairly shady practice. Though the reserving of common words such as menus.com or socks.com isn’t considered harmful per se, the more malicious infraction of acting in bad faith to profit from a distinctive or famous brand was considered bad enough that Congress legislated against it in 1999.
While one might assume that the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act would be the last word on whether or not this was a savvy practice, this memo clearly never made it to Germany, where a techie named Sebastian Klein registered several domains involving the word Google, then offered to give them to the search and advertising giant in exchange for a job.
Klein posted his application on Google-related URLs such as adwordsgoogle.de, docsgoogle.de, gdrivegoogle.com and labsgoogle.de.
“Hi Google, I would not like to keep these domains, earn also no money with it. I return it to you immediately free of charge. All I seek for is a job at Google,” he wrote, first translated by Google Blogscoped.
However, a job turned out not to be “all” that Klein sought.
“I would like to perform a lot and also be paid well,” he went on to say, and also be flown back to Germany once a week. “Important for me is that I every weekend somehow come to Cologne, in order to visit my daughter. Of course, there can be exceptions, but I would not be longer than a maximum of three weeks away from Cologne [Klein’s hometown].”
By Nov. 1, Klein’s URLs, including adwordsgoogle.de, had been redirected to legitimate Google sites, leading many to wonder if he had gotten his way. Google has declined to comment so far.
Klein turned out to not be new to using the Web to land a job. In 2005, he made news when he tried to get a job for his girlfriend by auctioning her off on eBay. The auction’s title (before it was pulled by eBay) was, “Offering very good trainee to work for 3 years, 8 hours a weekday.”