Once the German domain registry authorities were notified, the transfer was reversed, only to be immediately stolen again in what looks to have been another fraudulent transfer request.

As soon as this was discovered, the second illegal transfer was also cancelled, with the Google.de domain restored to its original glory.

Ebay.de went through similar domain name registration and confusion, and obviously the German system hasn’t improved much since then, so hopefully a stuff-up which involves one of the largest companies on the web will give German telecommunications and Internet authorities a much needed kick up the backside to ensure this doesn’t happen to other website owners, be they small businesses, enterprise class companies or companies in between.

Google is continuing its research into more answers on how this could have happened to prevent it from happening again in the future.
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