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Google Mistook Jackson Searches For Net Attack
Slatterz writes "Web giant Google has admitted it thought the sudden spike in searches for Michael Jackson on Thursday was a massive, coordinated internet attack, leading it to post an error page on Google News. The company's director of product management, RJ Pittman, explained that search volume began to increase around 2pm PDT on Thursday and 'skyrocketed' by 3pm, finally stabilising at around 8pm. According to Pittman, last week also saw one of the largest mobile search spikes ever seen, with 5 of the top 20 searches about Jackson. Google wasn't the only site caught out by the extraordinary events. The Los Angeles Times web site also crashed soon after it broke the news of Jackson's death."
Google gave users a CAPTCHA to let them proceed, and for somebody not searching for Michael Jackson news, the site worked normally. That's very different from a complete outage that affects even the non-sheeple users, or even the reduction in features that services like Twitter used to handle the load.
When I was a freshman in college, an EE professor put a chart up on the projector. It was a fairly consistent chart with one giant spike right in the middle. He explained this was demand on the US power grid over a period of several months, and asked the class what they thought caused the giant spike...most big world events of the 90s were thrown out by the students....and they were all wrong.
The spike that put all the country's power plants at full capacity was the announcement of the OJ Simpson verdict.
I don't think you are grasping the whole picture, and your post is modded up by the same kind of people who complain that MJ out-twittered Iran for a little while. Do you believe that we are really incapable of being concerned about multiple topics at once? I am, of course, way more concerned for the people in Iran and the conflict that is happening there than I am about MJ's death - but did I search Google after my friend came by my desk that afternoon and said, "Michael Jackson died!" - of course I did! Does that mean I don't care about the coup in Honduras or the sham trial in Burma, or about Obama's new healthcare plans? No. And frankly, that's stupid to even suggest.
You see, those other things I listed are not surprise, immediate events. Those things are not likely to have caused millions upon millions of people with internet access to suddenly, at the same time, wonder, "is that true?" I'll let you finish thinking about only this post while I go check out some pr0n, read my email, and browse some other news headlines.
Down with the career politician! SUPPORT TERM LIMITS