 "Sanmay Ved")
He says he did not want to own the Google.com domain name, but Boston-based Sanmay Ved was able to do just that. "A strange thing happened at 1:20 am Eastern Time on Tuesday, September 29," reads a blog post that he shared on LinkedIn, which meticulously details how Ved was able to buy the Google domain name, even if only for a minute or so. It appears to have been a technical glitch that showed the domain name as "available" on Google Domains. Thankfully for Google, it could cancel this transaction immediately since it owns the domain registration service, unlike Microsoft.
When Ved published this post on the professional networking website, he says he didn't do much to make it popular. "It just went viral," he says over the telephone from Boston, where he is an MBA student at Babson College. The post now has over 280,000 views, 1,600 "likes" and 210 comments.
It seems that Ved knew all along how popular a headline like "How I Ended Up Purchasing & Owning Google.com via Google Domains" would be among netizens. It is no wonder then he documented the proof of his victory by taking screenshots of each cyber step he took. But, he says, it was only a result of his incredulity at what was happening. "It took me three hours to write that post. I had to be absolutely sure what I was writing was accurate," he says. Though he tries hard to contain his excitement, his bubbling voice gives him away.
Ved is not the only one excited about his temporary ownership of Google.com. The public relations department at Babson College reached out to him soon after his post went viral and even arranged interviews with popular media organisations such as Fox News and Boston Global. The college also shared his story on its Facebook page.
This isn't Ved's first tryst with the Internet, either. When he was in school in Hyderabad, he launched what he calls "India's first gaming store". "Though I can't write a single line of code, it was easier back then to create HTML websites," he says. Over time, Ved could not sustain the work that needed to go into maintaining the website and gave it up.
After studying B Com from Bharatiya Vidya Bhawan in Hyderabad, where his father has a lighting fixtures business, Ved worked with Google between 2007 and 2012. "I developed a fascination for Google's products there and I love exploring the vast Google universe," he says. This is what, he adds, led him to Google Domains.
Ved's family had mixed reactions to his conquest. His mother found out about it because she checked his "last seen on" status on WhatsApp and discovered that he was up till late that night. His father, though, was not amused. "He thought I had hacked into the system and was worried I might face 'consequences'," he laughs.
And indeed there have been consequences, though not entirely dire. Google, says Ved in an email, has offered him a reward in what he calls a "Googley way". Ved says he never asked for a reward and, in fact, told Google just that. But now that the reward has been offered, he says he wants the money to be donated to the Art of Living Foundation.
Ved knows how to strike the right chord with the people of his country. "The Indian Prime Minister's visit to Facebook and Google to promote a digital India did work wonders. The very next day of his visit, it ended up convincing Google to sell what is perhaps their most prized possession to a person hailing from the small city of Mandvi in the Kutch region of the Indian Prime Minister's home state," he writes in the LinkedIn post.
He also believes that this will be a fascinating ice-breaker for job interviews and hopes to work for one of the technology giants in the US. "Of course, everyone's dream company is Google," he says.
