In case you haven’t heard by now, a Babson College student from Massachusetts—and ex-Google employee—recently managed to buy the Google.com domain name for $12.
On September 29, Sanmay Ved was searching for available domain names online when he came across “Google.com” available for purchase. He had been keeping an eye on the company’s internal domains and so, simply clicked ”add to cart”, and poof, there it was. He was the proud owner of the web address, Google.com.
Shortly afterward, he reported the incident to Google security, who began investigating the purchase.
Google has a program to reward people who find “hiccups” or bugs in their system, and Ved asked that the money be donated to charity.
“I don’t care about the money. It was never about the money. I also want to set an example that it’s people who want to find bugs– not always about the money,” he told Business Insider.
After learning he would be donating the reward, Google offered to double his prize.
The company, on Ved’s behalf, will donate over $10,000 to Art of Living India, a program that helps bring educational and humanitarian programs to 154 countries around the world.
(Image by Carlos Luna, CC)