A college student in Massachusetts claimed that he paid $12 to purchase Google.com, one of the Internet's most popular and famous sites. He shared in a LinkedIn blog post that he expected to get an error message after the short-term takeover of the domain name. After the purchase was completed it appeared on his credit card record. The young man then allegedly informed the search giant's security team, whose Rewards Program pays cash for website vulnerabilities reported.
Sanmay Ved is a graduate student at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and an ex-employee of Google. He also uploaded a screenshot as visual proof that the Google.com website name was available to interested buyers.
Ved ironically used Google's website-buying service to track the domain name. When he observed that Google.com could be purchased, he forked over the $12 price tag on September 29, according to BBC.
Ved then started to receive email messages sent to Google's web administration team. The MBA college student claims that he informed Google's security team.
His transaction was cancelled after a 1-minute ownership of the Google domain. Ved was informed that another party had already registered Google.com.
A Google spokeswoman confirmed the domain name's purchase with The Huffington Post. Ved was offered a "bug bounty" reward through the Google Rewards Program, which gives cash rewards to people who find security vulnerabilities in the company's products, according to Ubergizmo.
Ved reportedly turned down the money and asked that the reward instead be donated to the Art of Living India Foundation. Google sent twice the amount to the educational charity.
The Google.com domain name was first registered on Sep. 15, 1997.