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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.
would've refused, and they certainly wouldn't have allowed the delegation to change.
Unless Google was doing something whacky like running their Google domains service he bought the domain through on the same nameservers that the Google.com zone was hosted on, And allowing the buyer to edit their existing zone contents without needing to change the list of nameservers.
Just an attention seeking idiot, in my humble opinion. Just because a registrar's system will let you put a domain that's actually not available into the shopping basket and even lets you pay for it doesn't mean that you "owned" it at any point. It's like a real estate agent "selling" you the White House and accepting payment for it - doesn't mean that you now own it.
Back in 2002 Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) were planning to massively re-brand themselves as Intruducingmonday.com, however, they forgot to register the .co.uk! Big mistake as it was soon registered by Rob Manuel of b3ta.com and USVSTH3M who quickly put a flash video largely consisting of Two Fingered salutes and Donkeys and a song with lyrics like "La la la we've got your name" and "We like donkeys". This quickly went viral resulting in PWC abandoning their re-branding efforts (Not sure if heads rolled or not) and b3ta.com getting thousands of new members.
So yes you can do quite a bit if you manage to purchase an important domain
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.