
How I Ended Up Purchasing and Owning Google.com via Google Domains - miket
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-purchased-domain-googlecom-via-google-domains-sanmay-ved
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ljk
any way to read it without logging in?

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doubt_me
A strange thing happened at 1:20 AM Eastern Time on Tuesday, September 29. I
was learning more about the Google Domains interface, and typed google.com and
clicked search domains. To my surprise, Google.com was showing as available!

I clicked the add to cart icon beside the domain (which should not appear if
the domain is not available for sale). The domain actually got added to my
cart as seen by the green check-box, and the domain appeared in my cart.

I was hoping I would get an error at sometime saying transaction did not go
through, but I was able to complete purchase, and my credit card was actually
charged!

As soon as I completed purchase, I received two emails, one from sc-
noreply@google.com, and one from wmt-noreply@google.com, which is not the norm
when you book domains via Google Domains as I have booked new, previously un-
registered domains before, and I have never received emails from the above
aliases on booking the domains. I will not share the contents of the emails
here given they relate to the Google.com domain. The domain also successfully
appeared in my Google Domains order history.

Additionally, my Google Search Console (aka Google Webmaster Tools) was auto-
updated with webmaster related messages for the Google.com domain which
actually means ownership was transferred to me! One gets the below messages in
Search Console only for those domains for which one is the verified
admin/verified owner (of course access was removed when domain was taken back
by Google).

Additionally, I started receiving notifications, for when ownership changed
(along with new owner details etc.) in the Google Search Console for websites
(I will not name them) that are powered by Google Sites (which makes sense
given that websites powered by Google Sites rest on the master domain
Google.com). Quite clearly, ownership had been granted to me. Order was
successful.

Though purchase had successfully gone through, and domain now belonged to me
as evident above, the purchase was followed by an order cancellation email
from Google Domains. Google could do this given the registration service used
by me (aka Google Domains) belonged to Google, unlike the 2003 event in which
Microsoft forgot to renew their Hotmail UK domain which was registered with
Nominet UK. As a result, the Hotmail UK domain was returned to the open market
for pickup by anybody who fancied it. Somebody else picked it up, and as
Microsoft wasn't the registrar themselves, Microsoft wasn't able to cancel the
order, and take it back automatically. In my case, I don't know what caused
Google to lose ownership of the domain Google.com as a result of which it was
available in the open market.

The purchase got completed and the card was charged (which would not have
happened unless I actually successfully completed checkout, as otherwise I
would have received an error). The charge was not a pre-auth.

The order history page auto-updated itself with a new message (missed taking a
screenshot when the canceled message was not appearing).

On searching again for the domain Google.com, it now finally shows as
unavailable.

The Indian Prime Minister's visit did work wonders...it ended up convincing
Google to sell the most visited domain on the internet to a person from the
Kutch region of the Indian Prime Minister's home state...albeit just for a
minute or so :)

\-----

Note: I have reported the incident to Google Security. Google has reverted
back, and has acknowledged the incident.

all your missing are some screenshots

~~~
ljk
thanks!

