The folks at Openbase — a company that helps developers select right open-source packages — have been trying to figure out why they are getting "strange support tickets" like these:
- "FireTV not working."
- "My package came but it's broken."
- "We redeemed an Amazon gift card and wanted the money back on the card."
"For some reason, Amazon support requests were coming to us," said an Openbase employee.
After pouring through all of our analytics services, logs, and anything else we could think of, we still had nothing. Finally, through a third party SEO service, we found a new backlink – http://amazom.com – which redirects to https://openbase.com. Surprisingly, this link isn't just the result of fat-fingering, a quick google search will reveal this typo exists all across the web. Here's where things get really strange – Amazon owns this domain. Why does it redirect to us at Openbase?
So, Amazon owns amazom.com, which is reasonable. But why is Amazon redirecting traffic to Openbase? Openbase reached out to Amazon to find out, but the behemoth is being tight-lipped about it.
From the Openbase employee:
We've learned a few things from this ordeal:
- Always investigate traffic spikes thoroughly
- Angry users understandably don't care that Openbase.com looks nothing like Amazon
- Double boxing, along with plenty of styrofoam and bubble wrap isn't always enough to ensure mugs don't break in transit. While we don't do any shipping here at Openbase, we do care very deeply about open source packages, so be sure to start your search for tools, frameworks, and libraries at openbase.com
