The most significant disruption of the zeitgeist nearly dawned while the world remained oblivious this week, as www.google.com allegedly saw a fleeting change of ownership, at the cost of twelve dollars.
MBA candidate at Babson College and former Google employee Sanmay Ved published a blog post on his LinkedIn this week, detailing how the world’s most-visited domain, www.google.com, briefly slipped through the tech company’s fingers, after Ved purchased the domain on Google Domains – leaving change from a $20 note.
Ved writes that while browsing Google Domains, he searched for the cream of the crop, and noticed it was available for purchase at $12 per year:
Ved then details how he did what anyone else would do: added that bad boy to his cart and punched in his credit card details. He writes:
“I was hoping I would get an error at sometime saying transaction did not go through, but I was able to complete purchase, and my credit card was actually charged!”
Ved claims that the purchase seemed to be legit – google.com popped up in his Google Search Console, where notifications from sites that you own should show up.
Soon after, however, a cancellation of the order was processed by Google Domains – a process that was allowed, according to Ved, because google.com is registered to Google Domains itself. The reason why the domain was up for sale in the first place remains unclear, Ved says:
“I don’t know what caused Google to lose ownership of the domain Google.com as a result of which it was available in the open market.”
Close one, m8s.
via LinkedIn.
