The SAME thing happened to me yesterday and I thought it was some quirk. I feel the same way and will call (?) I guess to register my complaint. Bet I'll hang up the phone angrier than when I started...

Sherry, I'm somewhat relieved to know that I'm not the only one who found this to be a surprise. But good luck with the calling thing. ;-)

I don't blame you. I even get irritated whenever I visit a site and that site changes the appearance of my mouse cursor.

Dammit, that cursor is mine, not theirs!

...and that site changes the appearance of my mouse cursor.

Uh oh. Umm, you might want to not mouse over one of the Gazette's dotted-underlined acronyms, then. I use CSS to change the cursor to a question mark in that specific instance.

This is actually an interesting issue, because there's a fine line between the website owner's right to define the "web page experience" and the visitor's right to control his or her browsing preferences. You're probably OK with the designer dictating how links will appear in your browser (underlined or not; bolded or not; hover effects or none), but you draw the line at changing how your cursor looks. I'm not arguing that your decision is irrational or without merit, just pointing out that it's another in a long list of examples of how many decisions a web designer must make for even basic sites.

Can't you just type in a search term into your Google search bar? (That's the way I think. I rarely type in URL's.)

SD, what I'm referring to is my tendency to guess at URLs when I'm not absolutely sure. (Or, sometimes I just misspell them.) When I enter an invalid URL, Google will by default provide me with some suggested alternatives. So, I'm not actually trying to do a web search.

I'm sure your approach works well for the way you do your browsing, but it puts a mostly unneeded step into my work flow (if that makes sense).

This is not a huge issue, by the way. It's one of those "principle of the thing" things.

Interesting. I've had that happen before, when working off my home connection, but I never gave it much thought. In my case, it's Grande Communications doing the redirecting. Mine says “Powered by Yahoo!”, but much of the “Why am I here?” explanation uses almost the same verbiage as yours.

Unfortunately more and more ISPs want to interfere with your web browsing. Some are inspecting the web pages you view and dynamically inserting their own ads (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080715-congress-goes-after-nebuad-again.html)

And then they are also interfering with other traffic, like voice and video chats between people to try and get you to upgrade to more expensive service.

I wish we all had more choices, but at best people only have two choices (the cable company and the phone company) and a lot of people only have one.

FYI, I think the way Yahoo and Suddenlink are doing what they are doing is as follows:

Before:
1. You enter an incorrect domain name into your browser.
2. Your browser needs to turn that name into an address, so it asks whatever domain name servers (DNS) it is configured to use. Usually those are the DNS servers with your ISP (Suddenlink, in this case)
3. The DNS servers try and find an answer. If they can't, they let your browser know.
4. Your browser then asks Google to help figure out what you really meant.

What's happening now:
When the DNS servers can't find an answer, they lie, and give your browser the address of yahoos servers. Your browser connects, thinking everything is fine, so it never makes its own request to Google. In exchange, Suddenlink gets some money from Yahoo if it was able to serve any ads on the page.

One thing you can do is use some other DNS servers. I can't really recommend any though. The only ones I know of that are free and open to the public do the same thing Suddenlink is doing now, but at least they are up front about it, and they let you opt out and still use their servers, if I remember right.

Foo, Suddenlink's redirect page is also powered by Yahoo, so it appears that Grande has the same practice.

Erik, thanks for the enlightenment. I suspected it was something like that. It's not a big enough deal for me to search out new DNS servers, especially since opting out does resolve the issue. I just wish Suddenlink had been more transparent with what they are doing.

I find it interesting that you do your searching from the address bar. Mainly because it was you that hipped me, a couple hundred years ago, to the 'Ctrl-L, Tab' search keyboard-fu. If Firefox ever changes that tab index, I'm sunk.

Wow. I obviously need to take a refresher course in how to write clearly. I didn't think I said anywhere that I was using the address bar for searches. I might attempt to hack an URL every now and then, but this whole thread is about who controls automatic redirect function of my browser; it has nothing whatsoever to do with searches.

I have long ago stopped typing in URL's because I'm not so good at remembering them. I prefer the indirect route. (Yes, I know that requires an extra click.)

So even my ISP would conspire to get me to use Yahoo! I'd likely never know it.

To be honest, where I trip up the most is misremembering keywords I've assigned to bookmarks, especially for older client sites that I haven't visited in a while. I try to guess at the keyword, and if it hasn't actually been assigned, the search/redirect kicks in.

If nothing else, we've learned that we've all got our specific processes for getting things done, and none of us like it when something interferes with them!

Can't replicate the problem even using your search string on my Suddenlink connect w/ or w/out URL configuration. Bet you scared them off....or not.

OK, that's fine. What, precisely, did you expect to find at "wsssssssj[" anyway? There's not even a TLD there. So, in short, you're searching from the address bar, and that's a function of most modern browsers, which I know you know.

As you have noted, and to answer your question redundantly, the person who controls the redirects is the person who controls the DNS. I'm willing to bet cash money that a true search directed at a true search engine would have returned results you might have expected. But that's not what you did. You threw a term out into the ether, and the ether responded. Once you enter the ether, it's the job of the folks running the ether to respond. After all, a few short years ago, it would have been a 404 page, which the average bear cannot interpret at all.

And this all really sounds like talking to my mama about icons and popups and spam. Now I detest myself.

What, precisely, did you expect to find at "wsssssssj[" anyway?

That's what happens when you have a keyword ("wsj") assigned to your bookmark of the Wall Street Journal's website, and a sticking "s" on your keyboard.