Man Who Bought Google.com Is Handing Over His Reward to Charity

Now it has emerged that Mr Ved has been given a “bug bounty” by Google’s security team for revealing the weakness in the domain buying system.

IN THE EARLY hours of Tuesday 29 September, former Googler Sanmay Ved was still awake, scrolling through Google’s domains interface. He won’t disclose the amount Google awarded him, only hinting that it’s at least “more than ten thousand”.

Ved believed that his real reward was just being the person who bought Google.com for a whole minute.

Ved, who is studying at Babson College in Massachusetts, added the domain to his shopping cart and to his surprise, the transaction actually went through.

Sadly for him, his coincidental run of Google.com was short-lived, as Google Domains canceled the sale a minute later and refunded Ved his $12. When Google first told him he wouldn’t get any money as a result of the accidental transaction, he said it was fine – he’d rather it be donated to charity anyways. “It was never about the money”, Ved told Business Insider.

In an interview with Business Insider, Mr Ved said: “It was never about the money”. “I also want to set an example that it’s people who want to find bugs that it’s not always about the money”.

This amount isn’t exactly surprising considering that Google routinely rewards “white hat” hackers (the term for hackers that expose vulnerabilities for good) with amounts ranging from $100 to $20,000.

Once Google acknowledged the mistake, they rewarded Ved with a few unknown sum of cash – but the company made a decision to double the reward when Ved generously suggested it go to charity instead…

However, Ved says his actions were not motivated by money and he is not interested in making a financial gain from the purchase.