It’s not every day that we come across news like this one. It is a short story about a person who bought “Google.com”, although for a minute.
Sanmay Ved, an ex-Google employee, was surfing through Google Domains, Google's website-buying service, when he came across Google.com, and yes, it was available and too for a meagre $12.
Hoping to get an error message, Ved took the next step, added it to his shopping cart, made payment and was able to complete the purchase.
Following this, he received two emails from sc-noreply@google.com and wmt-noreply@google.com (which is not the norm, he adds), and his Google Search Console (aka Google Webmaster Tools) was auto-updated with webmaster related messages for the Google.com domain, meaning that ownership was actually transferred to him.
"The scary part was I had access to the webmaster controls for a minute," Ved told Business Insider.
But soon he received an order cancellation email from Google Domains. He explains that Google could do this as the registration service used by him (aka Google Domains) belonged to Google, unlike the 2003 event in which Microsoft forgot to renew their Hotmail UK domain and when somebody else picked it up, Microsoft wasn’t able to cancel the order.
"So for one minute I had access," Ved added. "At least I can now say I'm the man who owned Google.com for a minute”.
Ved has posted the whole ordeal along with screen shots on LinkedIn.
"I can't shake that feeling that I actually owned Google.com," Ved told Business Insider.
