This Man Bought Google.com For Just $12 and Then Owned It For an Entire Minute

October 1, 2015

An ex-employee at Google bought sole ownership of the domain name “Google.com,” but was relieved of his hosting powers after only one minute.

Sanmay Ved worked for Google for five and a half years before leaving to get his MBA. While he was searching around in Google Domains late one night, he noticed that the Google.com domain was available for purchase.

Not believing that he would actually be able to purchase the domain, he added it to his cart. To his surprise, the $12 transaction went through and he became the owner of the most trafficked domain in the world. Ved told Business Insider:

“I used to work at Google so I keep messing around with the product. I type in Google.com and to my surprise it showed it as available. I thought it was some error, but I could actually complete check out.

“The scary part was I had access to the webmaster controls for a minute.”

Ved is not sure why he was able to buy the domain name, but he suggested that it might be a glitch in Google’s Domains or a mistake within the administration who accidentally forgot to renew the name.

Either way, Ved’s ownership was revoked after only a minute. He received an email that said that the domain name was purchased by another registered site, and he was refunded his $12.

Although Ved was only in charge of the most visited internet domain for one minute he said:

“I can’t shake that feeling that I actually owned Google.com.”

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