- Former Google employee was shocked to see domain listed for sale
- He tried purchasing it out of curiosity for $12
- Google soon contacted him in a “Googley way”
One of the most valuable domains on the Internet – Google.com – was once accidentally sold to a curious man for the price of a Five Guys burger and shake.
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In 2015, Sanmay Ved, a former Google employee from Mandvi in Gujarat, India, discovered late one night while browsing Google’s domain service platform that the domain name was oddly listed for sale.
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Writing on a LinkedIn post about the experience, Ved explained that “A strange thing happened at 1:20 AM Eastern Time…I was learning more about the Google Domains interface, and typed google.com and clicked search domains. To my surprise, Google.com was showing as available!”
Curiosity led to ownership of Google.com
Ved, who had worked in ad sales at Google, noticed that “Add to cart” appeared next to the domain name and grew curious about how far he could go with trying to buy the tech giant’s domain. To his amazement, when he clicked it, the domain was actually added to his cart – confirmed by a green checkmark.
He proceeded to checkout, expecting an error, but it never came. “I was hoping I would get an error at some point saying the transaction did not go through,” he recalled, “but I was able to complete the purchase, and my credit card was actually charged!”
Confirmation emails soon started landing in his inbox, and he was given access to Google’s webmaster tools, which, according to Ved, “actually means ownership was transferred to me!”.
He searched for the domain name again, just to make sure he wasn’t dreaming – and sure enough, it was no longer available for purchase.
Sanmay Ved was now the owner of Google.com. For all about a minute.
“Though purchase had successfully gone through, and domain now belonged to me… the purchase was followed by an order cancellation email from Google Domains”, he explained.
Google was able to do this as the registration service used by Ved (Google Domains) belonged to Google.
Ved was offered a $6,006.13 reward
Google reached out to Ved and were “excited” to offer him a quirky cash reward for his discovery. In an update added to his LinkedIn post, he wrote “Google Security has now contacted me, and has offered me a $x reward in a very Googley way”.
The company offered him a $6,006.13 reward, a figure that numerically resembles the word Google. However, for Ved, it was never about the money.
“I wrote back and told them it was never about money, and asked that the money be donated to charity to the Art of Living India Foundation,” he said.
Art of Living India Foundation is a global non-profit organization founded in 1981 by spiritual leader and humanitarian Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.
Ved requested that the donation be made to the “organization’s education program which runs 404 free schools across 18 states of India, providing free education to more than 39,200 children in the slum, tribal and rural belts where child labor and poverty are widespread.”In response to his generosity, Google doubled the donation amount to $12,000, as noted in a blog post from the company.