Random Internet User Buys Google Domain for $3

Argentinian version of site was down for several hours Wednesday
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 23, 2021 3:34 AM CDT
Somebody Bought Argentina's Google Domain for Under $3
The main Google.com domain was unaffected.   (AP Photo/Michel Euler, File)

The Argentinian version of Google went offline for a few hours this week after the domain was bought by an Internet user for less than $3. Nicolas Kuroña tweeted Wednesday night that he saw the domain google.com.ar for sale and legally bought it when he visited the site that manages domain registrations, Newsweek reports. La Nacion reports that Kuroña said he had a receipt showing that he bought the domain for 270 pesos—around $2.80 US. Google recovered the domain within hours and apologized to users for the outage, though neither the company nor the NIC.ar registry site commented on Kuroña's move.

It's not clear how the domain ended up for sale, MercoPress reports. Users speculated that somebody at Google had forgotten to renew it and Kuroña had snapped it up after it expired, but the Open Data Cordoba group, which tracks expired registrations, said the domain hadn't been due to expire until July. Commenters criticized the service at the NIC registry site and praised Kuroña as a "hero." The NIC site also went down Wednesday night as a flood of visitors tried to check who owned the Google domain. (More Google stories.)

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