Renewing your domain names on time is a simple task, but it's a problem that private investors and large companies alike run into time and time again. As it turns out, even digital giants like Google aren't immune to this kind of mistake. Android Authority reports that the corporation nearly lost the domain of its South African site, Google.co.za, last week.
The site suddenly stopped working, and several users performed a Whois check. They reported on Twitter that the domain name expired on June 25, and would be deleted on July 1 and available for anyone to register again. Fortunately, Google was able to act fast: just a few hours later, it renewed the registration and the South African site resumed its work.
Surprisingly, this is not Google’s first mishap of this kind. In the fall of 2015, the corporation managed to forget to renew the registration of Google.com. Moreover, one of the corporation's former employees, who happened to discover such a strange thing, even became the domain registrant for a few hours. He could not believe what was happening even after his bank card was charged $12 for registering the domain Google.com (!!!), and he received a notification that he was now its owner. He contacted Google security himself and was immediately offered a generous reward for the domain’s return. To the registrant's credit, he returned the domain for free, asking that the money be donated to charity.
