Argentine version of Google falls into “wrong” hands

  • > >According to the Open Data CĂłrdoba group (which is dedicated to tracking expired Argentine domains) Google's domain had not expired and, in fact, the expiration date was in July. But the group too was unable to explain what had happened or why.

    Ouch. I think someone's going to have some explaining to do in the post-mortem.

  • I recently sold cryptocomicbook.com and decided to list some additional domains for sale, at the exact time I listed them a handful of ua.(TLDs) got listed for sale including ua.com and whoever listed them must have done it in bulk and given them all the same price ($76).

    So I bought the ua.com for $76, at that point the seller must have realized what happened and immediately changed the sales price of all the other TLDs from $76 (example ua.co went from $76 to a min of $48,000), the marketplace confirmed the seller was verified as the owner or had authority to sell ua.com. Of course after the fact the marketplace reversed the transaction, they oddly reconfirmed the seller was verified/legit (I thought they would say the seller got past their verification but wasn’t legit), and they have refused to confirm why if the seller was legit that they reversed the sale transaction.

  • Meanwhile, I can't even figure out how to buy domains with my name in them from people who just buy them and sit on them.

  • The domain google.gi is still for sale, because it can only be purchased by people who live in Gibraltar.

    See also, this post: https://tinyprojects.dev/posts/i_bought_netflix_dot_soy

  • Google has also failed to buy their Soviet domain name: http://google.su/

    And they even forgot about http://google.xn--vermgensberatung-pwb/

  • If you're looking for domains potentially getting 'dropped' by Google, look no further: https://infogalactic.com/info/List_of_Google_domains

  • I wonder how long it would have taken to be noticed if he replicated DNS and sat on it for a while. Better yet, how long if he had redirected or cloned the site.

  • How was he able to register the domain months before it was supposed to expire? Did he hack the registrar itself?

  • Among other exploits, you could generate an SSL cert and harvest cookies. All visitors would have to do is load your site in their browser. Right?

  • Actually, it turns out http://google.ar/ might still be owned by someone else?

  • I love this line from the article "but when everyone suspected that the server had crashed, as is often the case..."

    That must be a pretty big server!

  • somebody actually posted it as an 'ask hn' last night! I'm actually physically hurting right now. I wonder how much google will pay to get their precious domain back.

  • How did Google reclaim it ? What is the mechanism in DNS that allows someone to take ownership of someone else's domain and so quickly ?

    Is it just because it's Google ? or is there something that allows anyone who previously owned a domain to claim it back ?

  • This is still happening? It used to be very annoying decade or so ago, but I thought it was already solved/fixed/improved.

    Are there really no option to make a domain registration without expiration?

  • It's not quite google.ar, but I'm still trying to figure out what to do with https://gnu.gl/

  • Out of curiosity, I queried about 100 DoH servers (open resolvers) for "google.com.ar". Every A record returned contained an IP address registered to Google.

  • Once I told my friend ja.red was available for $9, and after he bought it they told him it was a mistake and reversed the transaction.

  • Fun article, but they will get it back with relative ease. Happens all the time. Trademark domain.

  • It was wrong, not so wrong, since it could have been worse, like a scammer who could had setup a fake page. Instead, the person didn't even park the DNS, just left it without resolution. This helped everybody realize there was a problem.

  • > The technical term for this type of manoeuvre is called “Cybersquatting” in English.

  • I see this kind of stuff happening all the time; some of them being high-profile sites too (e.g. "Keep America Great" got taken from Trump). Is there some website that monitors domain expiration and sends out alerts or is this mostly lone-actors? I'm always surprised by how quickly they move in on the domain

  • I once bought .org.it after some newspapaer misspelled our .it domain name as .org.it (which is a non-existant TLD) and I tried to regain the exposure.

    They didn’t let me through though… :(

  • I'd just make it redirect to duck.com or remake the site (Google.com) and change all the icons / buttons to ones drawn with paint.

  • https://archive.is/7nkiR

  • Wait, didn't our version of Google also fall into the wrong hands?

  • How much does Google pay MarkMonitor for this to happen?

  • check this out https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26907303

  • However, minutes later after the manoeuvre, it was confirmed that Google has already recovered the domain.

    I'm confused. It seems to me that this article just through some lines in it without further explanation.

  • He bought it legally and google.com.ar should be down all the time he wants.

  • Google probably threatened to abuse poor guy with legal action.

    Similar to what MSFT did to the guy who totally legally registered mikerowesoft.com

  • Google will sell you domains that it doesn't own. I've purchased .MX and .CO.UK domains from them just recently. I've purchased Thoth.zone, Thoth.mx and Thoth.pw from them. From networkingsolutions.com I've bought thoth.domains. It's a crazy turf war situation right now, given the broad international legal overlaps and so on and so forth.