You may remember back in September of last year when a man named Sanmay Ved purchased the world’s most valuable domain name, Google.com, for $12. The former Google employee said he found the domain up for sale on the listings, and decided to try purchasing it just for fun. He didn’t think the transaction would go through, but much to Ved’s surprise, he was able to charge his card the $12 and own the domain name… for one minute.
Of course, Google was quick to notice something wasn’t quite right when they all of a sudden didn’t own their domain name anymore and cancelled the transaction just after it was originally created. However, as payment for Ved noticing the error, Google told Ved they’d send him a payment for $6,006.13. Why such a specific amount? Well, if you look closely, you can see that 600613 is GOOGLE in numbers (or at least as close to it as you can get).
Ved immediately chose to donate the money to a charity, and when Google found this out, they doubled the payment to $12,012.26. The money was donated to the charity Art of Living India Foundation, a non-profit that runs schools in areas in India that are high in poverty for free.
Google has been known to pay their users for errors found in Google’s system, including over $35,000 for a security researcher working on checking Android for problems. So, if you happen to run across a security issue with Google, be sure to let them know, as you may get some cold hard cash for your Internet stumbling!
