This may be an entry level question but I have never run into it so I need a little advice.

Say I have a company that makes widgets named MyWidget, Inc.  I have one competitor - XYZ Widgets, Inc..  XYZ has registered the XYZWidgets.com domain name but not the XYZWidgets.net domain name.  What is to stop me from registering the .net version and then redirecting that traffic to my company's website?  Also, if a visitor inputs XYZ Widgets into Google wouldn't Google return both the .com and the .net websites?

Google doesn't list pages by domain, it lists them by ranking in reference to the search terms.  It may not display either domains, one domain and not the other or oth.

Jeff

Buying that domain will be a waste of time and money. It won't hurt the competitor (no one tries the .net TLD first), it won’t get traffic (cause it won’t have content to rank) and it won't boost SEO. In fact, could even hurt rankings if forwarded incorrectly. But, it will piss off the competitor and, if they have cash, cost you money in legal fees. Imagine if you had apple.net and forwarded it to Microsoft.com. Apple would spend be the GDP of Belize to fight it.