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How Someone Acquired the Google.com Domain Name For a Single Minute
An anonymous reader writes with the story of how Sanmay Ved bought "Google.com" even though it only lasted a minute. BGR reports:We've all been there: It's nearly 2 in the morning and you're cruising around the Internet looking for new domain names to purchase. I mean, talk about a cliched night, right? Now imagine that during the course of your domain browsing, you unexpectedly discover that the holy grail of domain names — Google.com — is available for purchase for the low, low price of just $12. Testing fate, you attempt to initiate a transaction. Dare I say, you're feeling a little bit lucky. And just like that, in the blink of an eye, the transaction goes through and the vaunted and the highly valuable Google domain is in your possession. While this might read like a ridiculous plot summary from some horrible piece of nerd fiction, this series of events above, believe it or not, actually happened to former Googler Sanmay Ved earlier this week.
No, he never owned the domain. google.com is registered through 2020 so the registry (Verisign) would've refused, and they certainly wouldn't have allowed the delegation to change. Even their system thought he had the domain for less than 1 minute. Clearly just a glitch.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Even if you did manage to purchase a major domain what would it get you? For better or worse every case I've heard of where some individual was trying to elicit large amounts from a company/organization by sitting on a domain, the companies, without too much difficulty, took possession of a domain that related significantly to their company/organization. I suppose some companies would pay a bit to avoid litigation but not too much as they can get it with a little time and effort.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I think everyone's a little bit confused here. Domain name registry is provided by authorized registrars on behalf on top level domains (tld); in this case .com. The "nameservers" addresses are registered with the tld, which will then provide second, third, forth, whatever you want level lookups. I haven't read tfa but this had to be a registrar goof up. Most give at least a 3 month grace period for renewals even after it expires. And that's just for regular joes. I'm sure titans of the internet have special rules.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
but then he got Google Webmaster Tools to recognize him as the owner, and he was getting information.
He owned it, legitimately, but then before any opportunity to do much harm, Google responded and use a clause that allowed them to revert ownership. Pointless? To some degree, yes. But, did he technically own it? Yes.
Also, that he was getting some notices means that there was a security lapse.