For 1 glorious minute, this man owned the Google.com domain

For about one minute, Sanmay Ved said he owned the most valuable domainon the internet: Google.com. Yet, for a prized address, it was surprisingly cheap. Google.com only cost him about $16 Cdn, according to Ved.

Ved is an MBA student and an ex-Google employee who had been pokingaround Google'swebaddress purchasing service, Google Domains. He searched for Google on a lark. The site returned with several unavailable addresses, but a conspicuous green happy face appeared next to the address "Google.com."

He tried to buy it and a few clicks later, Ved said Google charged his credit card for $12 US. He blogged about the process on his LinkedIn account, grabbing screenshots along the way.

"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!" he wrote.

Ved said he then received unusual emails from Google accounts instead of the usual purchasing receipts, and suddenly had access to Google'swebmaster tools, implying that he really did own and control Google.com. Alexa ranks Google.com as the most frequently visited domain on the internet.

"Additionally, I started receiving notifications," he wrote. "For when ownership changed (along with new owner details etc.) in the Googlesearch console for websites (I will not name them) that are powered by GoogleSites (which makes sense given that websites powered by Google Sites rest on the master domain Google.com)."

His reign over the site was cut short however, as Google Domains cancelled the transaction about a minute later. He wrote that it refunded him his $12 and took away his control.

"So for one minute, I had access," Ved told Business Insider. "At least I can now say I'm the man who owned Google.com for a minute."

Ved has no idea why he was able to purchase the domain in the first place. He speculated that it could be either that Google forgot to renew it or that there was a glitch in Google Domains that allowed him to purchase an address that wasn't available.

A representative from Google told Business Insider that the company waslooking into the incident but had yet to notice anything unusual. Vedworked at Google as an account strategistfor more than five years.

Popular websites tend to have their domains automatically renewed, but it wouldn't be first time a major tech company has failed to purchase itsown address.

In 2003, Microsoft forgot to renew Hotmail.co.uk and had to ask the opportunistic buyer to return it. Though the buyer gave it back for no charge, Hotmailat that time was the world's most popular free email service, according to Bloomberg.