Anyone here watch the tv show “How I Met Your Mother”? “Nothing Good Happens After 2 A.M.” is the 18th episode in the first season of the television series. In this case, it was around 1:20 AM Eastern Time, on Tuesday September 29. Sanmay Ved was testing out the Google Domains interface, typed “google.com”, and then something strange happened. Google Domains showed that the domain google.com was actually available:
Ved thought for sure that at some point in the checkout it would show an error, but that didn’t happen. He received confirmation from Discover Card that his credit card was used to make the $12 Google domain purchase online, and he received email confirmations from Google regarding his new google.com domain, along with access to the domain. One minute later, Ved received another email from Google cancelling the registration. So he owned google.com for about one minute. It’s kind of like being principal for a day, but just for a minute. Ved chronicles his experience on LinkedIn.
The cancellation was easy for Google as Ved used their own domain registration services for the purchase. Google didn’t have to ask/get help for return of the domain name ownership, like Microsoft did in 2003 when they forgot to renew their Hotmail UK domain and someone registered it when it was released in the open market. In 1999, Microsoft also forgot to renew the domain name passport.com – in that case their email services weren’t working and they were trying to work out the issue with Network Solutions. It was just that it needed to be renewed for the $35. Linux programmer Michael Chaney figured that out and made the payment. It’s not clear what the issue was here with the Google.com domain. Perhaps a programming glitch in Google domains, meaning that the domain wouldn’t be available for purchase via other registration companies.
It’s good practice to remember to renew your domains.
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