The man who bought Google.com for 12$
An ordinary citizen will live to tell his grandchildren that he once owned Google.com for a few minutes.
What would you do if you owned the domain google.com; Would you jump for joy? Let alone if you had bought it for less than 15 euros!
When the conversation comes to identifiable web domains, The google.com is definitely one of the first things that comes to mind. For a few seconds, however, the king of search engines lost control to a man who bought the page address for the paltry sum of twelve dollars!
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In a lengthy post on Linkedin, Sanmay Ved described in detail how he ended up buying one of the most important domains in the world and how he lost everything a minute later!
According to Ved, he had accidentally typed google.com into his search tool domains.google.com, to see how the whole thing worked, when he was faced with a huge opportunity: to buy the domain on 12 Dollars per year, the same price as other less recognisable addresses. Unable to believe his eyes, he went ahead and completed the purchase.
Soon after, he had gained access to the webmaster notifications of its page. Everything indicated that he had bought the google.com. But his joy was short-lived.
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Along with the emails confirming the purchase, there came a email informing him that his purchase had been cancelled. In fact, he wrote, incorrectly, that his credit card had not been charged, while he had received a receipt for the 12 dollars.
The tone of the Ved, in his text, is light and entertaining. But some of the comments submitted put a lot of weight on how the Google cancelled a confirmed transaction for no other reason, apparently using its power.
Η Google wanted to reward the Ved, as it does in similar cases when users find security vulnerabilities in its system. But he wasn't interested in the money and asked for some kind of donation to be made to Art of Living India Foundation. All we know is that the money was over 10.000$.
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The incident reminded us of something similar that had happened in the past, when the Microsoft had forgotten to renew the web address hotmail.co.uk and somebody else got to her.
From mirelen.
