Following in the steps of Booble.com, a similar adult search engine modeled after the Google search engine, website owner Dill Dough went live in March with his own rendition of an adult-only search engine, only in this case parodying Yahoo's search site.
The search site, which Dough said features millions of websites in its database, got off to a popular start but eventually hit a snag when Yahoo went through the National Arbitration Forum to take back the domain.
NAF is an independent Internet domain name dispute resolution provider that addresses cases in which trademarks are "similar or confusingly identical."
Dough first purchased the domain through GoDaddy.com.
According to Dough, he would have taken the site down if Yahoo had simply bothered to contact him directly.
"If they had just sent me an email, I would have taken care of it right then," said Dough, who operates between 25-30 gambling, shopping, and ecommerce websites. "They really tried to put the scare on us, but we told them that the site was intended as a joke."
Booble.com founders are currently using a similar argument in trademark infringement discussions with Google Inc. According to one of the site's founders, the dispute between Google and Booble continues, although neither side has yet taken any judicial actions.
Dough, however, is confident that the new name branding for MrDough.com will carry over and eventually become an industry mainstay.
"Even through the actual changes we've made, the users we had before have had no problems coming over with us to MrDough.com," Dough told XBiz. "They've given us their full support and traffic has even increased.
As for the eventual fate of the YasexHoo.com URL, Dough expects that Yahoo will most likely let the domain slip into obscurity for six months before using it for some type of domain redirection purposes.
"There is no way they will just leave it be," Dough said skeptically.
