Google accidentally loses Argentinian URL to teenager

[rcmaehl]

Summary

Google accidentally let their .com.ar domain expire. Allowing a keen eyed individual to grab it for a few minutes.

 

Media

 

Quotes

Quote

The Google Argentina... went down on Wednesday night. The search engine domain appeared for an hour in the hands of a young man who claimed to have registered it in his name with the...Internet Domain Registry. The first reports of a failure began to appear... around [10PM]. Many doubted, even if when they entered Google they did it to the global version or a local one, the "com.ar". It happens that the page does a redirect and when you enter “Google.com”,...it redirects to the version of the country in which the user is located. When searching the nic.ar site... google.com.ar, appeared registered on April 21, 2021 in the name of Nicolás David Kuroña . "The domain expired, it was available to buy. It's all legal, " wrote a user with that name (@Argentop) on Twitter . Before the questions of other tweeters, he explained: "I went to http://nic.ar, I saw that the name of http://google.com.ar was available and I bought it." Even when consulted by a journalist, he explained that he paid the VEP accordingly to register the domain, an operation that costs about 200 pesos. Domains ending in .ar expire once a year and are lost when they are not renewed. Finally, after an hour of uncertainty in networks, with crossed data, complaints and even memes, the domain reappeared as the property of the technology giant, Google, Inc., expiring on June 8, 2021. The search engine, however, remained out of service until after midnight.

 

My thoughts

This surprisingly isn't the first time Google has lost their domain. Back in 2015, they lost their .com domain to Sanmay Ved who got a nice payout for this occurring. I hope this individual also gets a nice payout from Google. You'd think that for such of a large company, they'd have auto renew on or more eyes to notice these issues.

 

Sources

Clarin (Quote Source, Non-English)

Ambito (Non-English)

Nicolas Kurona's Twitter

[DexterSmythe]

I'll just leave this here for Google to read... https://www.godaddy.com/domains/full-domain-privacy-and-protection

"Protect against accidental expiration and domain hijacking."

[RAM555789]

Just now, DexterSmythe said:

I'll just leave this here for Google to read... https://www.godaddy.com/domains/full-domain-privacy-and-protection

They probably had it set to auto renew and the account they where using for billing got changed messing it up.

[Arika]

LOL

[leadeater]

Hah! Take that Google, lol.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

And google now is going to pay like 1mil to this kid

[RejZoR]

When multibillion TECH company doesn't know how to tick automatic domain extension in domain control panel... Then again, it's Google, so...

[WolframaticAlpha]

3 hours ago, rcmaehl said:

Summary

Google accidentally let their .com.ar domain expire. Allowing a keen eyed individual to grab it for a few minutes.

 

Media

 

Quotes

 

My thoughts

This surprisingly isn't the first time Google has lost their domain. Back in 2015, they lost their .com domain to Sanmay Ved who got a nice payout for this occurring. I hope this individual also gets a nice payout from Google. You'd think that for such of a large company, they'd have auto renew on or more eyes to notice these issues.

 

Sources

Clarin (Quote Source, Non-English)

Ambito (Non-English)

Nicolas Kurona's Twitter

MikeRoweSoft anybody?

[Murasaki]

If I was in their place I'd just make it redirect to bing. Total confusion!

[RejZoR]

1 hour ago, Murasaki said:

If I was in their place I'd just make it redirect to bing. Total confusion!

DuckDuckGo For the Duck army!

[Fasterthannothing]

1 hour ago, DriftMan said:

Is this even legal? I mean, surely Google has some kind of copyright, or registered brand or something, right?

Yeah I feel like that kid will get nothing and be happy he's not getting sued

[Brooksie359]

1 hour ago, DriftMan said:

Is this even legal? I mean, surely Google has some kind of copyright, or registered brand or something, right?

I mean it was an available name on the site so I highly doubt that it would be illegal especially if it wasn't used for capital gain. Also that would be trademark not copyright. Typically they would have to be making profit off of someone else's trademark before it becomes infringement and often times you would have to be in direct competition for it to count. who knows what the laws are in Argentina though so it could be totally different there. 

[Haraikomono]

Dang, I would definetly put a rick roll link to that, so be trolling everyone in Argentina

[whm1974]

28 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

 who knows what the laws are in Argentina though so it could be totally different there. 

This is very true. Many Nations Copyright and Trademark Laws Favor their own Citizens over other Countries ones.

[dilpickle]

The fact that they got it back in 1 hour tells me they probably didn't have to pay the kid.

[lostcattears]

lol, it has happen before and we have discussed this on the Wan show, the teen would have to give it back cuz it is basically google's trademark, if google gave some money back good on him. But he won't be keeping the domain for long.

[Brooksie359]

1 hour ago, lostcattears said:

lol, it has happen before and we have discussed this on the Wan show, the teen would have to give it back cuz it is basically google's trademark, if google gave some money back good on him. But he won't be keeping the domain for long.

Yeah but they really don't have a leg to stand on. Trademark doesn't protect against other holding a url that has your Trademark in it unless they are competing with you. 

[Guest willies leg]

Now I'd go for redirecting it to Floatplane or something like that...

 

[wasab]

Haha. Wonder who mess it up. 

[mon1ka]

On 4/22/2021 at 2:32 PM, RAM555789 said:

They probably had it set to auto renew and the account they where using for billing got changed messing it up.

It being a billing issue dosent sound right to me. Maybe it was an account issue? Who does google even pay for their URLSs?

[LAwLz]

On 4/22/2021 at 6:20 AM, rcmaehl said:

Google accidentally let their .com.ar domain expire. Allowing a keen eyed individual to grab it for a few minutes.

No they didn't.

The registry fucked up and accidentally unregistered Google in the middle of their ownership of the domain.

 

 

On 4/22/2021 at 6:31 AM, DexterSmythe said:

I'll just leave this here for Google to read... https://www.godaddy.com/domains/full-domain-privacy-and-protection

"Protect against accidental expiration and domain hijacking."

Google most likely had that. Doesn't help when the domain register fucks up though.

 

 

On 4/22/2021 at 9:09 AM, RejZoR said:

When multibillion TECH company doesn't know how to tick automatic domain extension in domain control panel... Then again, it's Google, so...

They do.

It's nic.ar that fucked up, not Google.

 

On 4/22/2021 at 12:39 PM, DriftMan said:

Is this even legal? I mean, surely Google has some kind of copyright, or registered brand or something, right?

Not sure about Argentina but it's illegal in the US.

Nissan.com is a pretty famous example of it. The ONLY reason why Nissan (the car maker) wasn't allowed to seize the domain from the person who owned Nissan.com is because the guy who owned it (RIP) had the last name "Nissan" and he used to use it for his business.

[FRD]

This is old news. Google had the same thing happen to another domain of theirs in I believe it was last year or 2019. They got it back though, so it's temporarily.

[LAwLz]

And for those wondering how I know Google didn't mess up.

1) It's not the early days of the Internet. Domain registers have safeguards in place to prevent this type of thing from happening.

2) Domain registers have grace periods. Even IF Google had forgotten to review their domain, it would take months before anyone could actually buy and use it. ICANN actually mandates at least a 30 day grace redemption grace period.

3) If we query NIC we can clearly see that google.com.ar is set to expire in 2021, July the 8th. Since it is impossible to register a domain for less than one year, we can safely assume that this is not just some temporary registration Google did to fix this. We can even see that Google have owned the domain since June 8th 1999 as well.

[Bombastinator]

My memory is that if you let ANY url expire ther were bots set to automatically buy it and then more or less hold it for ransom.