For a brief moment, former Google employee, who is now employed at Amazon, Sanmay Ved was the owner of a recognizable domain name. On Sept. 29, Ved bought Google.com for only $12.
Everybody knows how hard it is to get a decent domain name. Resorting to weird combinations and funny names to obtain a name just won't cut it, especially for businesses and other formal websites. Ved, however, did the unexpected. He typed in an extremely well-known domain, "Google.com," and it popped up as available.
Ved said that he was on Google Domains, learning more about the domain name service and interface, when he typed in the domain name. He probably did it on impulse and wasn't expecting much, but he was ecstatic to see the add-to-cart icon, which meant that the domain name was available. He continued on with the purchase, thinking it was just a bug and that it wouldn't push through, but it did, and he completed his purchase successfully.
He posted his experience online with clear screenshots that show that he did become the domain name's owner.
After a short while, Google sent Ved email and text confirmations, but the emails came from sc-noreply@google.com and wmt-noreply@google.com, which he found unusual, saying it "is not the norm when you book domains via Google Domains."
Google cut his ownership short, refunded his money and sent an order of cancellation. Google was able to easily take back the name because it owned the registration service that Ved used.
This isn't the first time that a big company like Google had its domain name owned by someone else. In 2003, Microsoft lost Hotmail.co.uk when the company forgot to renew its domain name, leaving it open to the market. Somebody, of course, bought it. Microsoft was lucky that the buyer was goodhearted because the Good Samaritan gave it back the same day.
Ved did not explain how it happened, and it is probably just a bug because it's not like Google to botch up such an important matter.
"I have reported the incident to Google Security. Google has reverted back, and has acknowledged the incident," Ved concluded on his blog.
Photo: Robert Scoble | Flickr
