Meet the guy who owned Google.com for one minute…for $12

I’m no domain futures entrepreneur, but if I had to guess, of all the domains in all of the internet, a little web address known as google.com is probably worth a pretty penny.

Sanmay Ved, an ex-Google executive, luckily became the owner of “Google.com” domain on Tuesday for just one minute.

So, how much did it cost him to buy the most-trafficked domain in the world? To his surprise, Google processed the transaction, billed his Discover card, and added Google.com to his control panel.

“I used to work at Google so I keep messing around with the product”. “I thought it was a few error, but I could actually complete check out”. “Additionally, I started receiving notifications, for when ownership changed (along with new owner details etc.) in the Google Search Console for websites (I will not name them) that are powered by Google Sites (which makes sense given that websites powered by Google Sites rest on the master domain Google.com)”. His run of Google.com was short-lived though. Ved said that he also got emails with inside information, which he went ahead and reported to the Google’s security team. Google Domains canceled the sale a minute later, saying someone had registered the site before he could, and refunded Ved the $12 that had already been charged.

Google hasn’t commented on the story yet, though Ved claims he has spoken to the company about the incident. His “ownership” lasted a minute before it reverted back to Google. He frantically took screenshots along the way and detailed the whole ordeal in a LinkedIn post. Unlike, as Ved points out, when Microsoft lost control of its Hotmail United Kingdom domain in 2003 because it forgot to renew its ownership in time.

“I was learning more about the Google Domains interface and typed Google.com and clicked search domains”.

Google.com, on the other hand he only “owned” for about a minute.

In fact, the current registration for Google.com isn’t even up for renewal until September of 2020 and the record was updated four years ago… so it’s not possible that Google let the domain expire and Zed happened to swoop in and register it before someone in Mountain View noticed what was going on this week.