How a Former Googler Bought Google.com for $12
The most famous address on the internet showed up as available in Google's own domain store, and the checkout went through. What happened next shows the gap between what a domain costs and what it is worth, and how Google pays people who find its mistakes.
The short version
On September 29, 2015, Sanmay Ved, a former Google employee studying for an MBA, found google.com listed as available on Google Domains and bought it for $12. For about a minute he was the domain's registered owner, until Google canceled the order and refunded him. He reported the glitch, and Google paid a security reward of $6,006.13, then doubled it when he gave it to charity.
Twelve dollars for the internet's most famous address
In the early hours of September 29, 2015, Sanmay Ved was browsing Google Domains, the company's own domain-registration service, when he typed in google.com. To his surprise, it showed as available. He assumed it was an error, but the checkout went through and his credit card was charged $12. Every step worked the way a domain store is designed to work: search, available, add to cart, pay. The only thing wrong was the name.
Ved was not a random visitor. He had worked at Google for five and a half years in Hyderabad, India, and at the time he was an MBA student at Babson College. Nothing in the reporting suggests he used inside knowledge, and he has not said he tried to do anything with the domain once he had it.
What owning google.com for a minute actually meant
For roughly a minute, Ved was the registered owner of the domain. Messages from Google Search Console, the tool formerly called Webmaster Tools, began arriving for google.com from Google's no-reply addresses, sc-noreply@google.com and wmt-noreply@google.com, including notices about the change in ownership. Ved, who told VentureBeat that receiving such messages was unusual, said they showed that ownership had been transferred to him.
It helps to be precise about what that covered. He held the domain registration, not Google's search engine, its email or the company. Then Google Domains sent him an order cancellation, and the $12 was refunded. Because Google was also the registrar, it could reverse the sale inside its own system.
Google has never publicly explained the exact technical cause. Domain stores sell names automatically when their systems mark them as available, and in this case Google's own store marked its most important name that way. The popular theory that Google simply forgot to renew is not something the company has confirmed.
Why Google paid him: the bug bounty
Ved reported the problem to Google's security team, which, by his account, got back to him some days later. Google runs a Vulnerability Reward Program that pays outside researchers who find security flaws in its products, and when it published its review of the program's 2015 results on January 28, 2016, it included Ved's case, describing him as a researcher who was able to buy google.com for one minute on Google Domains.
The reward came with a joke built in. Google's initial payment was $6,006.13, and the company said the digits spell out Google if you squint: 6 for G, 0 for o, 0 for o, 6 for g, 1 for l and 3 for e. It is a rough reading, as Google itself acknowledged, but the point landed.
From $6,006.13 to more than $12,000 for charity
Ved asked that the money go to the Art of Living India Foundation, which provides free education to poor children in India. As he told Poets&Quants, it "was never about money." When Google learned he was donating the reward, it doubled the amount, bringing the total to more than $12,000, or $12,012.26 if the original figure was doubled exactly. The money went to the foundation, not to Ved, and his school's magazine reported that he preferred not to discuss the amount.
The difference between a price and a value
The episode is a neat lesson in how little a price tag can say about value. The checkout put a $12 price on google.com because the system treated it like any other available name. What the address is worth to Google is a different question entirely, which is why the sale was undone within about a minute.
What Google did pay for was the information. A flaw that let a stranger buy its main domain was worth a reward, and reporting it was worth more than trying to hold on to it. That is the logic of a bug bounty: pay the person who finds a hole, so that it gets reported and fixed instead of used. Watch the short video on this page.
Questions people ask
Did someone really buy google.com?
Yes. On September 29, 2015, Sanmay Ved bought google.com on Google Domains for $12. He held the registration for about a minute before Google canceled the order and refunded him.
How much did Google pay Sanmay Ved?
Google's initial security reward was $6,006.13, a figure meant to spell Google. After Ved asked that it go to the Art of Living India Foundation, Google doubled it to more than $12,000, all of which went to the charity.
Why could google.com be bought for $12?
Google Domains listed the domain as available and processed the order. Google treated the episode as a security flaw and paid a reward through its Vulnerability Reward Program, but it has not disclosed the exact technical cause.
Sources
- I purchased the domain Google.com via Google DomainsLinkedIn (Sanmay Ved) · 2015
- Someone bought the Google.com domain this week for $12VentureBeat · 2015-10-01
- How Someone Acquired The Google.com Domain Name For A Single MinuteBGR · 2015-10-01
- This Man Owned the 'Google.com' Domain for One Minute This WeekTech.co · 2015-10-01
- Google Security Rewards - 2015 Year in ReviewGoogle Security Blog · 2016-01-28
- Google Gave This Much Money to Guy Who Owned Google.com for a MinuteNBC News · 2016-01-28
- The Babson MBA Who Outwitted GooglePoets&Quants · 2016-01-31
- The man who bought Google.comBabson Magazine · 2016-02-05
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