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Ah, yes, I forgot the NXDOMAIN hijacking.

I was thinking about interfering with existing sites.

AT&T definitely used to do this ~14 years ago.

Verisign tried this trick too.

https://dn.org/the-sitefinder-debacle-that-shook-the-interne...

AT&T still does this, if you're using their (intentionally terrible) standard gateway device the default DNS will return a "search page" instead of NXDOMAIN which predictably has all sorts of negative impacts on non-browser devices but the wastes of oxygen responsible for this don't care as long as they see that delicious ad revenue.