Man buys Google.com domain for $12, but has to give it back straight away

Unfortunately, Google spotted that the world's most-recognised domain had been accidentally sold and took it back

The man bought the famous domain through Google's own new domain-buying service (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

A man successfully bought the domain name Google.com for only $12 (£8) due to a computer error - but Google has managed to get it back.

Sanmay Ved, a former Google employee, made what would have been a very valuable purchase through Google's own new doomain-buying service.

Typing in the world's best-known URL, he was surprised to see it was available. He added it to his cart, put his credit card details in and paid for it, receiving his confirmation email minutes later.

Ownership of the domain was actually transferred to him, but he got an email a minute later from Google saying the order had been cancelled.

Mr Ved had no bad intentions and got in touch with Google's security team to report the flaw in their system.

A short URL can be worth a lot of money - according to the Huffington Post, Facebook paid $8.5 million (£5,598,920) for fb.com in 2010, and the domain porn.com was bought for $9.5 million (£6,257,617) in 2007.

$12 was indeed a bargain, but fortunately for Google and internet users, the mistake was quickly spotted.