Did you know Google accidentally sold their domain name

Did you know.

Google inadvertently sold their own domain name google.com via google domains.

Well, the story goes a little something like this.

In September of 2015 former Google employee Sanmay Ved was traversing through the relatively new google domains platform.

Google domains is Google's own domain name registration service. You can purchase domain names through google along
with other google products and services such as site builders and email.

So, out of curiosity Sanmay checks google.com and much to his surprise, google.com was available for registration.

This was certainly odd that google.com would be showing as available. Sanmay figures this is just some kind of error and Seeing that this could be a potential error, he selects the domain name expecting the system to immediately correct and show the domain name as not available.

On a side note, this is not uncommon with domain name registrars. There are instances where they will show certain domain names as available that are not. Or even premium domain names that are more expensive than what they will display. The system will usually make the correction upon checking out.

He continues to go through the checkout process, expecting the purchase to fail.

However, the transaction goes through and Sanmay paid 12 dollars for one of googles most valuable assets, the domain name google.com

Sanmay then received messages from discover that the sale was official.

Text messages Sanmay received from Discover: Discover Card: Transaction of $12.00 at Google *Domains posted to your account. Sept 29, 2015. Visit http://discvr.co/ 1GUSs8c text help for info, stop to quit. Discover Card acct alert: A purchase of $12.00 was made online, by phone or mail.

He also received a message from google notifying him as the new domain owner. Further validating the purchase of the domain.

However, his ownership of the google.com domain name was short lived.

Shortly after the purchase google recognized the error and reversed the purchase

Sanmay was refunded his 12 dollars and google recovered the domain name.

Google has an arrangement that rewards those financially, for finding potential Security flaws with their products and/or services. Compensation for identifying these security hazards could be in the high five figures.

Ultimately, Google informed Sanmay that there would be no reward.

Due to the transaction being accidental.

However, the decision to not pay the reward was later changed when they discovered that Sanmay didn't do it for the money.

They elected to pay him 6006.13, which represents the word google numerically.

Google Then decided to increased the amount to 12,000 dollars.

When they discovered the money was going to be donated to a charity.

Sanmay was quoted as saying "I don't care about the money. 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."

Sanmay, who is an advocate for education and a native of India. Had the money donated to the Art of Living India Foundation. They provide free education to areas of India where poverty and child labor are rampant.

https://www.artofliving.org/in-en/education-home

For more on this story you can click the links below.

Sources:
https://money.cnn.com/2016/01/....29/technology/google

http://uk.businessinsider.com/google-rewarded-the-guy-who-bought-googlecom-2015-10?r=US&IR=T

See you on the next episode of Did You Know.

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