An ex-Google employee, Sanmay Ved, was able to buy the world's most popular domain name for $12 and own it for a full minute.
Ved detailed the incident in a blog post on LinkedIn. He says he was searching through Google's Web hosting service, Google Domains, and noticed Google.com was available for purchase.
"A strange thing happened at 1:20am Eastern Time on Tuesday, 29 September [which would have been 7:20am on Wednesday in South Africa]. I was learning more about the Google Domains interface, and typed google.com and clicked search domains. To my surprise, Google.com was showing as available!"
Ved was able to add the domain to his cart and check out. His credit card was charged and he received two e-mails to confirm purchase.
His Google Webmaster Tool was then auto-updated with Webmaster-related messages for the Google.com domain. Ved says this further confirmed transferral of ownership.
Swift action
This all happened in a minute. A third e-mail followed at 1:21am from Google Domains, cancelling the order.
"Google could do this given the registration service used by me (aka Google Domains) belonged to Google," says Ved.
The $12 charge was refunded to his credit card.
Ved says the search engine giant would have had a harder time if it did not own the registration service used.
"In 2003, Microsoft forgot to renew their Hotmail UK domain which was registered with Nominet UK. As a result, the Hotmail UK domain was returned to the open market for pickup by anybody who fancied it. Somebody else picked it up, and as Microsoft wasn't the registrar themselves, Microsoft wasn't able to cancel the order, and take it back automatically. In my case, 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," says Ved.
Ved reported the incident to Google Security and says the company has acknowledged it.
According to Ved's LinkedIn page, he worked as an account strategist and display specialist at Google between 2007 and 2012.
Share