What would happen if someone actually managed to move google.com to a non-google registrar account under their control? Would someone step in and just seize it back? Can you imagine the magnitude of client devices hitting the wrong server for gmail,android updates,chrome even for a few minutes?
He never actually owned it. This was just a bug in the Google domains control panel. The source of truth (I believe ICANN) would never showed a change of ownership.
Wouldn't it be better to link to the original post at <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-purchased-domain-googlecom-via-google-domains-sanmay-ved" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-purchased-domain-googlecom-...</a> ?
Apparently this happened in 1999 with Microsoft's Passport.com as well [1], and again later with hotmail.co.uk [2]. While I understand that snafus like this can happen, I don't understand why the new owner would simply hand back the domain for essentially no compensation (especially in the case of hotmail.co.uk - this appeared to be a clean transfer of an expired domain). If they let the domain expire, it's fair game and should go for market price.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.doublewide.net/" rel="nofollow">http://www.doublewide.net/</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=at_jli4Blw0g&refer=uk" rel="nofollow">http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=at_jl...</a>
Definitely a bug in Google domains. The real one expires 9/14/2020. <a href="https://who.is/whois/google.com/" rel="nofollow">https://who.is/whois/google.com/</a>
I remember a Slashdot article back in the 90s about a guy who renewed hotmail.com for Microsoft when they accidentally let it expire. The guy needed to get to his email but couldn't and he quickly discovered the problem and fixed it for them.
My guess is it's just a bug in Google domains, allowing them to 'register' domains that the lookup RPC failed for. Google doesn't act as the registrar for their own domain, so there was never any risk of the ownership actually getting transferred to him.
Honest question. If he bought the domain from Google and the transaction went through, is that not technically a legitimate transaction and "cancelling" and refunding the money is essentially theft?<p>How is that any different than walking in to someone's house and leaving them $20 for the TV you took? It seems to me that "oops, take-backs" Is not a legitimate enough justification to reverse a transaction under contract law.<p>It seems rather ominous if even this kind of situation is permitted because it sets a precedent that corporations can simply decide to change their mind when something is not in their favor. Sure, it's an example that many people will simply rationalize or defend, but just on matters of assuring the credibility of the integrity of the whole market based system, Google should not be allowed to simply step away from this as if nothing happened without at least a fine that gets noticed by the executive suite.<p>How would you feel if in the future mega consolidated food corporation can arbitrarily decide that "oops, we changed our mind. That food you ate and sold to you for $X should have really been charged at $3X. Don't worry, we will charge your account. Have a nice day"<p>How about a different scenario; the airline industry decides that "oops, someone else was willing to pay more for that last seat on that flight you just booked. We just cancelled it and refunded your money. Have a nice day"<p>I get that it was probably a mistake of some kind. But what is it that immunizes corporations from the consequences of mistakes? I guess that's kind of rampant right now in our society and economy, but still.
In Ireland some one managed to redirect google.ie (The irish google search domain):<p><a href="http://technology.ie/google-ie-hijacked/" rel="nofollow">http://technology.ie/google-ie-hijacked/</a><p>The ccTLD register (The IEDR) had a vulnerability in their management portal that was exploited (I believe it was an SQL injection if I recall correctly).<p>The attacker changed the DNS servers to their own and then put an A name record pointing google.ie to their own server.<p>The server just displayed a hijacked by page.<p>It was probably just some kid. If it was a criminal they would have done some thing far more malicious.<p>yahoo.ie also got hijacked.<p>It was an absolute pain, for months after the IEDR's portal was disabled, you had to call them to make any changes to any .ie domain.
Also <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10308378" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10308378</a>.
Mods can you please change to the source URL instead? (Not that I'm a fan of linkedin...)<p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-purchased-domain-googlecom-via-google-domains-sanmay-ved" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-purchased-domain-googlecom-...</a><p>Edit: Here's a mirror for those that happen to have linkedin.com nullrouted in hosts or something: <a href="https://archive.is/HKPhn" rel="nofollow">https://archive.is/HKPhn</a>
On the 20.09, I received a totally legit invoice from invoice@google.com (99.99€ Candyclub - Bag of Gems). The sender is invoice@google.com, but no names, no other personal information. I thought it was somewhat strange, and reported it, but no answer.
The article says "He frantically took screenshots along the way and detailed the whole ordeal in a LinkedIn post."<p>... I find the choice of words funny. If he hadn't bothered to buy a domain he knew he would never be able to keep, there would be no ordeal!!!