In a somewhat comical turn of events, one hell-of-a-lucky guy managed to buy one of the most coveted domains on the whole world wide web, “google.com”, for a mere $12.
Google is one of the most influential and valuable brands in the world and is known specifically for its ability of being the ultimate search tool for everything on the web. “Google.com” is also the number one most visited site on the planet, processing a mind-blowing 40,000 search queries every second! Clearly, one would expect that the world’s most visited domain would cost millions and millions of dollars, if not billions. But, as one lucky guy found out, any one of us could have snagged the domain for a mere $12. That’s just twelve dollars, without any million or billion, roughly equal to 1,253 in Pakistani Rupees.
So what really happened is that Sanmay Ved, an ex-Google employee, was browsing through domain names on Google Domains, the company’s domain-selling arm, when he saw something unusual. Google.com was for sale, for $12! Absolutely sure that it must be a mistake, he decided to give it a go and tried to buy it(Well, who would pass up the chance to buy the number one site on the internet for a mere 12 bucks?). To his utmost surprise, he bought it and along came a confirmation email and a text message, confirming that his credit card had been charged. But it seems like that was the end of his lucky streak as Google, finally realizing their gigantic error, cancelled his purchase and refunded him his amount. For one short-lived yet blessed moment, Ved actually was the owner of the hottest site on the internet.
Since Google owns the service which transferred the domain rights, it would have been easy for them to save themselves from a potential PR-nightmare by cancelling the transfer, like the one Microsoft faced back in 2003, when it had the same accident with Hotmail.co.uk. We don’t have an official response from Google yet as to what caused the “google.com” domain to be available for purchase, but we are quite sure it won’t be happening anytime soon again.
Source: LinkedIn
