LEAVING a company is a bittersweet event. You could be leaving a place where you started your career, or heading to a place with better prospects.
But you'll take along with you things like experience, memories with good teammates or even a trinket or two from the workplace.
But could a former employee 'take home' something huge from the company - like its website?
Did a former employee of a tech company once manage to buy its domain name?
Verdict:
TRUE
This happened to Google, whose domain name was temporarily owned by its former employee a decade ago.
In the early morning of Sept 29, 2015, former Google employee Sanmay Ved was on Google Domains, Google's website-buying service, when he noticed that Google.com was available for purchase.
"I used to work at Google, so I keep messing around with the product. I typed in 'Google.com' and to my surprise it showed it as available," Ved told Business Insider.
"I thought it was some error, but I could actually complete check out."
Ved added it to his shopping cart, paid USD12 (RM49.57) for it, and the transaction went through.
Instead of receiving the normal "you bought a domain" emails from the company, Ved’s inbox and Google Webmaster Tools (also known as Google Search Console) were updated with sensitive information intended for the original owners of the domain – Google's webmasters.
However, Ved’s ownership of Google.com lasted a mere minute.
The company quickly emailed him to say it had cancelled the order because someone had registered the site before he could. Ved was refunded the USD12 that had already been charged.
"The scary part was I had access to the webmaster controls for a minute," Ved said, adding that he frantically took screenshots along the way and detailed the whole ordeal in a LinkedIn post.
Ved has been a fan of the company since he worked there for over five years before leaving to get his MBA.
"I can't shake that feeling that I actually owned Google.com," he added.
As a reward for finding the error, Ved was given a "bug bounty" by Google, which he donated to an Indian educational foundation called The Art of Living India.
When the tech company found out about his generosity, they doubled the reward.
Ved declined to announce the actual sum, but revealed it was over USD10,000 or RM41,310.
"I don’t care about the money. It was never about the money," he said.
While it's not possible to own Google now, perhaps what you can do is to go onto the search engine and find out what you can buy for your colleagues this Christmas?
Because if you enjoy working with your colleagues and teammates, you're in good company.
References:
1. https://www.theguardian.com/
2. https://www.businessinsider.
3. https://www.linkedin.com/
4. https://people.com/celebrity/
