A man who bought the Google.com domain name for $12 and owned it for about a minute has been rewarded by Google for uncovering the flaw.

Last month, student and former Google employee Sanmay Ved was able to buy Google.com for the small sum due to an administrative issue at the search giant.

He was surprised to find the domain up for sale and when he went to buy it, the $12 transaction went through and the ownership of the search site was transferred.

But within about a minute the purchase had been canceled and Ved's money was refunded.

"Google could do this given the registration service used by me (aka Google Domains) belonged to Google," Ved wrote in a blog post on LinkedIn.