Could you imagine owning the domain of the most popular website on the planet – even just for a minute?
This week, Babson University student Sanmay Ved became the luckiest guy in the Internet after he was able to successfully purchase Google.com for just $12.
In a blog post on his LinkedIn page, Ved explained that he was playing with Google Domains – the tech giant’s domain registration service – when he discovered Google.com was listed as available for purchase.
“I clicked the add to cart icon beside the domain (which should not appear if the domain is not available for sale). The domain actually got added to my cart as seen by the green check-box, and the domain appeared in my cart,” Ved wrote.
“I was hoping I would get an error at some time saying transaction did not go through, but I was able to complete purchase, and my credit card was actually charged!”
To his surprise, Google.com began showing up in notifications in his Google Webmaster Tools, proving that he did in fact own one of the most iconic web domains in the world.
READ MORE: Business owner beware – securing your domain name can be tricky and costly
But, sadly, it didn’t last very long. Within a minute he received an email from Google Domains stating that his purchase had been cancelled.
Ved added that the error allowing him to purchase the domain has been fixed. He also alerted Google security to the incident.
According to Mashable, large websites like Google usually automatically renew their domains to prevent these things from happening, which may point towards a bug in Google Domains being at fault for the incident.
Google isn’t the first big tech firm to have domain issues.
In 2003, Microsoft forgot to renew its Hotmail.co.uk domain allowing one lucky web user to purchase it. It took a few days for the company to get the domain back.
Comments