VeriSign, Google and bogus domain names

Jeremy Zawodny (among others) notes the news that VeriSign has added a wildcard record to its .com and .net zones, which in English means that if you mistype a domain name (or you try one that doesn't exist), instead of getting some error page, you'll get a VeriSign page.

Naturally, this is Evil and Something Must Be Done About It, preferably by switching all your domains to an open-source registrar. Now, as an Internet Explorer user, I'm not sure how, exactly, this is any more Evil than having a Microsoft search page come up when I mistype a URL (although some folks do note issues such as scalability, the impact on bounced e-mail and just the sheer irony of VeriSign basically getting into the same typosquatting as that alleged pornographer down in Florida).

In any case, I noticed something interesting this morning. Curious to see what I would get, I typed in some bogus URLs. Instead of a "page cannot be displayed" error or an MSN search page, I got:

A Google search page!

Telling me that the URL in question could not be found. I have the Google searchbar installed. So what's the deal with that? When I tried similar non-existent domains in (searchbar-less) Firebird and Lynx, I got simple error messages telling me those browsers couldn't connect to the site in question.

Update Zawodny checks in (see the comments) to say why this is more than just a browser issue - basically, it affects the whole architecture of the Internet, which, of course, sits atop IP numbers and DNS. Meanwhile, Wired reports the Internet Software Consortium has rushed out an anti-VeriSign patch (get the patch here), in part because the new practice means enterprises and ISPs could be flooded with more spam, since all those formerly unresolvable domain names in spam headers now suddenly do resolve - to VeriSign.