Man Who Bought Google.com Is Rewarded With Cash. Donates It to Charity.

A man briefly bought and owned Google.com and was rewarded by the big company.

US student Sammy Ved was able to buy the right to control the domain due to an administration oversight.

He owned it for around a minute before Google caught on and cancelled the transaction.

Google Security contacted and offered him a reward "in a very Googley way" but he replied telling them it was never about the money and asked the sum to be donated to the charity Art of Living India Foundation. Google, in turn, decided to double the amount.

Mr Ved detailed his experience in a post on the LinkedIn site saying that he had been keeping an eye on Google-related web domains for some time because he used to work at the search giant. Mr Ved is currently an MBA student at a US college.

In the early hours of the morning, he noticed a for sale sign next to the Google.com name while browsing the sites on Google's own website-buying service.

Within minutes of buying it, he started getting messages intended for Google's own web administration team.

This was followed by a cancellation message sent by the website buying service which said he could not take over Google.com because someone else had already registered it and his $12 payment was refunded.