Someone Bought Google.com For $12, Then Sold it For Way More

You might have heard in September last year about the Google.com domain becoming available for purchase due to a tech glitch. 

Sanmay Ved, who was a previous Google employee, seized the opportunity, and bought the domain that gets over 7 billion page views per day.

“I was learning more about the Google Domains interface, and typed google.com [sic] and clicked search domains,” Ved wrote in a LinkedIn post. “To my surprise, Google.com was showing as available!”

He paid $12 USD for the URL, which he owned for a short but sweet minute long before Google snatched it back up.

In order to get the domain back the company paid Ved an unknown amount.

“Google Security has now contacted me, and has offered me a $x reward in a very Googley way,” he wrote.

But how much did Google pay Ved for the domain? The company’s security rewards year-in-review for 2015 has revealed the answer. Google paid Ved $6,006.13 USD, which if you look closely is Google spelled out in numbers. Clever Google!

Ved, who wrote that “it was never about money,” donated the $6,006.13 to charity, and then Google, impressed by Ved’s generosity, doubled his donation to the charity. Aw Google you good sort!

Source