New Delhi: For Sanmay Ved, the joy of owning the google.com domain must have been beyond words, even if it was short-lived.
An MBA candidate at the Babson College, Ved ended up purchasing the coveted domain of the world’s biggest search engine while he was learning about the Google Domains interface.
When he typed google.com and clicked search domains, the domain name was showing as available. Eager to test the unbelievable availability of the domain for sale to the general public, Ved clicked on the ‘add to cart’ icon and followed the transaction process.
To his surprise, by far there was no glitch. The transaction was successful and he was charged $12 for the google.com domain. Soon after the purchase, he received two emails one from [email protected], and one from [email protected], which is not the norm when you book domains via Google Domains. The domain also appeared in Ved’s Google Domains order history, he explains in his blog on LinkedIn.
With the Google Search Console (aka Google Webmaster Tools) getting auto-updated with webmaster related messages for the ‘google.com’ domain, it was confirmed that the ownership of the said domain was transferred to Ved.
However, the bubble of happiness burst as the purchase was soon followed by a cancellation email from Google Domains. Google was able to revoke Ved’s ownership on its domain as the registration service used by him belonged to Google.
It is unclear what made Google lose ownership of the domain because of which it became available in the open market for pickup by anyone.
When he again tried to look up for the google.com domain, it now showed unavailable. Nonetheless, he owned 'google.com' for a minute!
The incident had been reported to Google Security and the company has acknowledged the case and looking into the matter.
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