Google.com, the most prestigious domain name in 21st century was sold out for a brief moment.
Sanmay Ved purchased the most esteemed domain at a cheapest cost of $12. He was using the Google’s Domain sales service at late night and he discovered that the Google.com was available for purchase. He was a former Google media sales employee currently working in Amazon said that he was messing around Google Domain Sales Service where he typed ‘Google.com’, and it was available. He presumed that it was not possible and tried purchasing the domain moving towards checkout. The Google.com domain was sold to Sanmay Ved for $12, with an email confirmation of the purchase order and later he received another mail cancelling the order from Google Domains.
Guess what was the amazing thing? The moment he made purchase, he was given complete domain and administrative privileges, meaning that he could control Google.com and too access precious and secure information.
Digging into Ved’s LinkedIn post, he said the most scaring part of whole operation was he could control Google.com for a minute. However, he received a cancellation order after a minute of purchase notifying the domain is authorized to someone else. Ved also says that he never received any such email as from his previous purchases from Google Domains.
He said, “I was hoping I would get an error at sometime saying transaction did not go through, but I was able to complete the purchase, and my credit card was actually charged.” Also, he was kind enough to report bug to Google’s security team to inform them about the breach. He later posted in LinkedIn that the concern was likely a bug in Google Domains.
Guess what? This is not the first time when it occurred. Back in 2003, Microsoft’s most prestigious domain hotmail.co.uk was purchased by somebody too.
Technically speaking, such issue does not normally occur with big companies like Google.com when they forget to renew their domains as with companies like Google domains get automatically renewed. The bug in Google Domain’s enabled Ved to make domain purchase.
