Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Google Mistook Jackson Searches For Net Attack

Posted by timothy on from the did-say-sorry-about-the-old-woman dept.

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."

2 of 256 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I wonder by Valtor · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Probably as soon as North Korea launches a nuke against someone the same thing will happen.

    The frightening thing is, I'm not so sure it will.

    This is indeed frightening and probably true.

    --
    "Sockets are the standard networking API, also useful for stopping your eyes from falling onto your cheeks" zeromq.org
  2. Re:I wonder by Nathrael · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    With Obama leading the US? Whether nuclear retribution would be a good or bad thing is debatable, but as long as Obama's president, I don't think it's going to happen. That is, unless it's the US that gets nuked, in which case he'd likely get impeached and voted out of office again for allowing his own country to get nuked by his inaction.

    All evil needs to succeed is for good men to do nothing, after all.

    --
    A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.