Google Argentina’s domain name was bought by a web designer while the site was out of action for two hours in the country last Wednesday.
Nicolas Kurona, aged 30, said he managed to buy Google.com.ar through a normal, legal process.
“I never imagined that it was going to allow me to buy it,” he told the BBC.
Google Argentina told the BBC: “For a short term, the domain was acquired by someone else.” It added it had regained control of the domain very quickly.
The story started when Nicolas was at his desk on the outskirts of Buenos Aires on Wednesday night, designing a website for a client.
He started getting messages on WhatsApp that Google was down.
“I entered www.google.com.ar into my browser and it didn’t work,” he said. “I thought something strange was happening.”
He decided to go on to the Network Information Center Argentina (NIC) – the organisation responsible for operating the .ar country code domains. He searched for Google – and up popped Argentina’s Google domain available for purchase.
Renewal Management
Even the best businesses can drop the ball when it comes to domain name management. Making sure that all of your business domain names are consolidated into one account is critical to avoiding google.com.ar events. A simple auto-renew would have avoided this situation.
About brandsec
Brandsec is a corporate domain name management and brand protection company that looks after many of Australia, New Zealand and Asia’s top publicly listed brands. We provide monitoring and enforcement services, DNS, SSL Management, domain name brokerage and dispute management and brand security consultation services.
