Meet the man who bought Google.com for $12

Sanmay Ved, an ex-Googler and currently a student at Babson University outside of Boston couldn't believe his luck -- like no other sane individual ever would --  when he was able to add the most-trafficked domain in the world to his cart and then successfully purchase it. As luck would have it Sanmay was the 'new' and proud owner of Google, or more precisely Google.com if you want to dig in.


Sanmay was able to own Google.com -- briefly -- for just $12, much to the Mountain View company's embarrassment. Although, Google was able to retrieve its domain name in a matter of 60 seconds, the damage was already done.


Sanmay took to his  LinkedIn page to recount the tale of how scurrying through the Google Domains interface at 1:20 AM Eastern Time on Tuesday, September 29, then typing in google.com in search -- out of curiosity perhaps -- led him to the inexplicable moment.


To his surprise, and Google's plight Google.com was showing as available, for purchase. Sanmay decided to stretch his luck further -- adding the domain name to his cart -- all the while hoping at some point of time he would get an error. But he didn't, get an error.


The transaction actually did go through and Sanmay was able to complete purchase.


His Google Webmaster Tools -- which is the Google Search Console -- began showing up notifications related to Google.com domain confirming his ownership of the domain.


But, within 60 seconds he received an email from Google Domains notifying him of the cancellation of his purchase. Google was quick to retrieve its domain name -- and pride to an extent -- because it owns the domain registration service Sanmay used.


Microsoft wasn't as lucky as Google when something similar happened to it when someone ended up purchasing the Hotmail.co.uk domain name in 2003. As it turned out, Microsoft had forgotten to renew its Hotmail UK domain which was registered with Nominet UK. Hotmail.co.uk was then out for grabs by anyone who liked. Quite obviously then, Microsoft wasn't immediately able to reclaim Hotmail.co.uk'.


In Google's case it's still not clear whether they forgot to renew Google.com or some internal bug caused the slip up.


However, things are now back the way they were and Google.com is no longer available for purchase. But, for the brief moment that it was, someone was able to prank Google, something that it would like to forget and move on, and perhaps learn a lesson along the way.