Earthlink has introduced a ’service’ that responds to failed web-requests with a search page provided by Yahoo! and Barefruit. Judging from a quick glance at the Barefruit website, it appears to be a transparent web proxy solution, that checks for error responses from the remote website (and DNS failures) and responds with a ’search’ page including ads. A screenshot of a sample response can be found here, a sample query is here. So what is new is that this feature does not only act on failed DNS queries, but also for failed web queries according to the Barefruit description of their service. So if your favourite website gives you a 500 error (and you are in the Earthlink network) – you might see ads and search instead.

• BetaNews: Earthlink criticized for DNS Redirects (it’s not just DNS, though)
• EarthLink’s response in their company blog, Earthling: Handling Dead Domains
• Discussion at DSLReports.com

[via BetaNews]