By Cherryy Chauhan
It wouldn’t have been such a big deal if Sanmay Ved had bought any other website domain except, for the most visited website in the world. The former Google employee owned Google.com when he saw it listed it for sale on Google Domains, a couple of months back.
HOW DID HE BUY THE DOMAIN?
Ex-Googler, Sanmay Ved, while browsing through a website called “Google Domains” discovered that the domain name Google.com was available for sale. Much to his apprehension, Sanmay added the domain to his cart and immediately made his move. The transaction was surprisingly processed and Sanmay was granted access to all the webmaster controls of the website. Within seconds, Ved was flooded with webmaster information of all sorts.
Ved recalls, “Additionally, I started receiving notifications, for when ownership changed in the Google Search Console for websites that are powered by Google Sites. Quite clearly, ownership had been granted to me.”
The transaction was later cancelled within sixty seconds of the purchase and he was refunded his $12. But that’s just not how the largest website in the world does it.
WHY WAS THE WEBSITE DOMAIN AVAILABLE FOR SALE?
It is still uncertain as to why the domain was made available for sale. It may have been because the company forgot to renew its domain name or may be a bug caused the most trafficked website in the world to be sold for mere $12.
TWELVE DOLLARS?! That’s just like ₹800.
WHY DID GOOGLE REWARD HIM?
Whilst Sanmay was quickly refunded the $12 he spent on purchasing the website, that’s just simply not Google’s style. Sanmay’s accidental purchase of the domain name was, in fact, a point out of the security of the website. Owing to that, Google decided to reward him for reporting the security breach to the website with $6006.13. It was a part of the Google Vulnerability Reward Program, as explained later on their blog. Only if I had seen that listing on Google Domains, first. Shucks!
If Google is generous in paying off for people’s troubles, Sanmay is not too far behind. Soon, after the news of Google rewarding a man broke out, Sanmay also revealed that all of his reward money has been donated to charity. Upon finding out that Sanmay pledged his entire sum of the reward to Art of Living’s education programme, Google decided to double up the reward!
I’m pretty sure he didn’t see that coming. Lucky chap.
And to think he was just browsing. Like regular surfing the internet. And he bought the biggest website in the world, never mind if it lasted for a minute. How often does our internet browsing sessions result in $12000 and ownership of Google? Not that often, I tell you. To be honest, after this, it would be really hard to boast about any great shopping deal I get because it won’t ever be as great as Sanmay’s. But the guy’s incredible deed of donating whopping $6000 to charity, gives us all the more reasons to HATE him.
Just kidding, you’re awesome Sanmay.
And much respect for your idea of donation to charity.
Way to go, man.
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