How Google.com Was Sold for $12 to an Indian Man

In 2015, an unusual incident took place when Sanmay Ved, a former Google employee from Gujarat, India, bought the Google.com domain for just $12. He found it available for purchase on Google Domains while browsing late at night. To his surprise, the domain showed up as available, and he managed to add it to his cart and complete the payment.

Ved was granted access to Google's webmaster tools briefly before the error was detected and the transaction was reversed by Google. Though the ownership lasted for just one minute, it was enough to gain attention from Google's security team.

As a reward for finding this major flaw, Google gave Ved $6,006.13 (around Rs 4.07 lakh). When Ved decided to donate the amount to a charity foundation that runs free schools for underprivileged children, Google doubled the reward.

This foundation provides education to over 39,200 children through 404 schools across 18 Indian states. Ved’s decision to donate the money gained appreciation both from the public and from Google.

Google acknowledged his contribution and also praised global researchers who help improve online security. Ved later shared the full story on LinkedIn. He explained how, at 1:20 a.m., he noticed that Google.com was listed as available. He expected the system to show an error while checking out, but to his surprise, the payment went through successfully.