Internet Suffers Significant Slowdowns After Michael Jackson’s Death

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Internet Suffers Significant Slowdowns After Michael Jackson’s Death

By CircleID Reporter
June 26, 2009, 6:45 pm PDT Views: 5,262 Add Comment

Maggie Shiels reporting from BBC: “The internet suffered a number of slowdowns as people the world over rushed to verify accounts of Michael Jackson’s death. Search giant Google confirmed to the BBC that when the news first broke it feared it was under attack. Millions of people who searched for the star’s name on Google News were greeted with an error page. It warned users ‘your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application’.”

In a related blog post later today, Google’s Director of Product Management, R.J. Pittman says: “The spike in searches related to Michael Jackson was so big that Google News initially mistook it for an automated attack. As a result, for about 25 minutes yesterday, when some people searched Google News they saw a “We’re sorry” page before finding the articles they were looking for.”

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By CircleID Reporter — CircleID’s internal staff reporting on news tips and developing stories. Do you have information the professional Internet community should be aware of? Contact us.
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