After the negative responses after HostGator monetised their customers’ 404 Not Found page, you’ll be thinking that no one else is going to mock around someone else’s domain — even your customers. Wrong. After all when the money talks, who needs ethics? Over the last 6 months I have seen more and more budget hosting companies seeking to make more money from 404 pages. Lunarpages, is one of the latest web hosting companies that tried out this scheme. However it back fired, its customers revolted, and it is all documented in this WebHostingTalk.com thread.

I have actually been reading that thread, currently at 12 pages, since it surfaced at WHT. The bigger problem, however, is not how Lunarpages steals their customers’ 404 pages — mind you that in my book, using an iframe to open a page on Information.com (ads provider for domain squatters) is even lower than just populating it with Google AdSense for search (HostGator). The bigger issue is how they perform the damage control. Sure, there is a fire that they need to put out, but I don’t think the tactics like changing the web hosting ToS, mass deleting forum threads, limiting customer communication between each other, etc will win anyone’s heart.

Instead, it back fired, created a lengthy thread on WHT and possibly other web hosting forums, and even other hosting companies have taken noticed and acted cleverly (btw, good one Josh!)

You gotta wonder — how much money does those 404 pages generate, to a point that Lunarpages is unwilling to back down, apologise and reverse the change? Actually I do not think any amount is worth it for their reputation. I wonder whether there is some contract with the spammers at Information.com/Oversee.net so they cannot easily reverse the change.

Update: 2007-10-12: Lunarpages have commented on DreamHost’s blog post. Looks like there’s a lot of bad blood between the arch rivals. Still, no public apology.