Sanmay Ved who bought Google.com donates Google reward to charity

After acknowledging the problem that allowed the purchase of the google.com domain for $12, Google rewarded Sanmay Ved with an unknown amount of cash, but the generous man donated it.

A few days ago I wrote about an incredible story of a man that bought the google.com and remained its owned for a few minutes.

Sanmay Ved, a former Google employee that currently works for Amazon, was searching for available .com domains and discovered the availability of Google.com … then he bought it for only $12.

In a few seconds his inbox and Google Webmaster Tools were flooded with webmaster related messages that were confirming the ownership of the Google.com domains, a scary circumstance if we consider that Ved had access to webmaster controls for a minute. Just a few minutes and the dream vanished, Ved received an order cancellation email and was refunded by Google Domains.

How is it possible?

Google owns Google Domains and this means that the company manage all purchases of domains and it could revoke them if needed.

The story is not ended, after acknowledging the problem Google rewarded Ved with an unknown amount of cash.

And this is the part of the story that I love, Sanmay Ved asked Google to donate his prize money to charity.

Great decision, my dear! Then Google decided to double the reward. Ved did not disclose the exact sum of cash Google had awarded him, but he confirmed that the overall amount was more than of $10,000.

Google Rewarded Ved with More than $10,000 and below the declaration that the generous man released in an interview with Business Insider.

“I don’t care about the money. It was never about the money,” Ved told Business Insider. “I also want to set an example that it’s people who want to find bugs that it’s not always about the money.”

Ved donated his reward to “The Art of Living India,” an Indian non-governmental organization involved in humanitarian projects with a special focus on stress elimination.

Great story!

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Google.com, Charity)

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.