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A Guy Bought Google.com For $12 — Here’s How Much He Sold It For

It's less than you think.

by Deepa Lakshmin 24h ago

Google.com, the internet’s favorite search engine, gets over 7 billion page views per day. Plus, the domain brings in an estimated $8 billion dollars in income. That’s one powerful URL, guys.

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On Sept. 29, the Google.com domain became available for purchase thanks to a tech glitch. Sanmay Ved, a MBA student at Babson College and previous Google employee, seized this opportunity.

“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!”

Google Doodles

He paid $12 (!!) for the URL, which he owned for one minute before Google snatched it back up. In October, 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 — as compensation for their error.
But how much did Google pay Ved for the domain? And what exactly does “a very Googley way” mean? The company’s security rewards year-in-review for 2015 revealed the answers on Thursday, Jan. 28. Google paid Ved $6,006.13, which if you “squint a little” is Google spelled out in numbers. Heh. Nice move, Google.
Good Guy Ved, who wrote that “it was never about money,” donated the $6,006.13 to The Art of Living India. The NGO provides free education to children living in undeveloped areas in India. Good Guy Google, impressed by Ved’s generosity, then doubled his donation to the charity.