in the fall of 2015, a former Google employee bought the google.com domain for 60 seconds for $12. This was a beautiful prank that Yahoo could never pull.
The Company Paid a Former Employee for The One Minute He Owned Google.com
This week, the company revealed just how they followed up Sanmay Ved’s purchase of Google.com for twelve dollars. They decided to gift Ved $6,006.13. In traditional leet, this number spells out Google. This is a classic geeky move of the company’s.
The corporation even went as far as doubling the amount when Ved revealed that he would give away all awarded money to charity. As such, the company paid $12,012.26 for their own domain name.
How Did the Domain Show Up As Available?
Ved had been browsing around the Google Domains Interface. By some miracle, the domain google.com showed up as available, so he bought it for twelve dollars. He was contacted by Google Security right after making the domain purchase, immediately offering the geeky amount. Soon enough it was doubled as soon as they found out it would be going to charity. This is a great move of the company’s, albeit an expected one.
Positive Rep – Would Yahoo Be As Playful?
This incident has proven to be a great plus for the company. They’re known for their goodie-two-shoes image, and this only gave it a further boost. The corporation has many initiatives that go to help people in disconnected areas and people in general. Their goal is to bring the internet everywhere and make it accessible to everyone.
With initiatives like Project Loon and Project Ara, the company has gained a great reputation. It would be interesting to see if Yahoo pulls a similar stunt. The platform has been losing users as of late, and it’s not doing anything to help itself. Most recently they’ve released a statement saying that it will block ad-blockers on the Yahoo! Mail platform. This action would allow for annoying and unnecessary advertisements that can only damage user experience. The response was very negative for the most part. The corporation is dependent on their two biggest subsidiaries Tumblr and Flickr.
