In a bizarre incident, an Indian-origin man named Sanmay Ved managed to buy the Google.com domain name for and had complete control over the most trafficked site in the world for 60 seconds. The name is no longer his unfortunately, as the company took back the rights within a minute of the purchase.
Sanmay Ved, an ex-Google employee, discovered the site was being offered when searching for the name through the Google Domains interface. He bought the rights for $12 or roughly Rs 785. In a social media post, he explained that his credit card was charged, which would not have happened if the availability was an error.
After Ved completed the purchase, he got two emails from [email protected] and [email protected], which is not the norm when buying other domains. In addition to this, his Google Search Console was auto-updated with webmaster-related messages. He believes this indicates that he was in fact the proprietor of the name, as such communication is only received by authentic holders.
According to his LinkedIn post, Ved got an order cancellation email from Google Domains soon after the transaction. His money was reverted back to him and the name soon showed up as unavailable on the website. He’s not certain why it was obtainable in the first place. It could be because of a bug or the license expiring for a brief period of time.
Also Read: Google announces Wi-Fi rollout to 400 railway stations across India
Ved reported the entire incident to Google Security, who confirmed that it did actually occur. The company was able to get the name back quickly as they own Google Domains. Microsoft faced a similar situation back in 2003, when they lost the rights to the Hotmail UK site. They has a bit of trouble with reclaiming it though, as they had bought the license from a third-party site.