Google thought Michael Jackson traffic was attack
Searches for Michael Jackson surged a little before 3 p.m. PDT Thursday.
(Credit: Google)Google has confirmed that the surge of Michael Jackson-related searches on Google News Thursday was first interpreted as an attack on its service.
Google News was inaccessible for some people Thursday afternoon right as rumors of Jackson's death began to circulate, replaced by an error message reading "We're sorry, but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now."
Of course, those queries were quite legitimate, as millions around the world searched for accurate information regarding Jackson following reports that he had suffered cardiac arrest. The spike in queries began at about 2:45 p.m. PDT Thursday, and Google thought the traffic was an attack for about 25 minutes before realizing what was going on.
Google also noted that it saw a huge spike in mobile searches. Yahoo's data backed up Google's; it set a record for unique visitors in a single day with 16.4 million visitors, and its lead story on Jackson's death was the most highly-visited story in its history.
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Internet search, including Google, Yahoo, online advertising, and portals, as well as the evolution of mobile computing. He has written about traditional PC companies, chip manufacturers, and mobile computers, spending the last three years covering Apple. E-mail Tom. 
Thanks for clearing this up!
And considering GOOGLE of all companies were overwhelmed with data, i think you can safely say that DD isn't coming any time soon.
For the majority, the grid just won't hold up against that much data.
Music, yes, maybe, but games / TV & films are already slowly crippling networks as it is.
Physical storage will be with us for a couple decades at least. If not more than that, going at the current rate, and the history of behavior from the people in control. (more availability = less money from selling bandwidth)
And since these things are mostly text based, when you translate it over to larger file formats (like video), it becomes a really big hog of bandwidth indeed.
But in saying that, they know all too well what it is like to have a large hog of bandwidth that is hard to finance. (Youtube)
It would be a shame to see Youtube die...
What this really is is a testing and scalability company's dream. How much revenue did an ABC.com or Perez Hilton loose from crashing just when their traffic (and thus page views and ads) could have sky rocketed! Time to pony up for more horsepower.....
Youtube is leaking money like a hose, even with ads.
BBC iPlayer is crippling BTs networks.
What do you think this whole Network Neutrality thing was about?
People wanted to break it for exactly these kinds of things.
Unless the networks are upgraded, you can bet these things are going to become more commonplace.
I don't want that to happen, but it will if digital distribution continues to grow. (and to note, i like DD, but the networks can't even nearly handle the numbers expected for the "fully DD" family of the future)
These aren't my words, these are the words of people who are experts in this area. (not the ISPs, just to note, ISPs lie all the time, we all know that)
I hope I made my self understood.
Of course what is meant by "die soon" and "near future" are both relative terms -- that everyone is skating around so as to cover their backside and not lose any faux-expert points around here.
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what i find interesting is that the flurry of activity around this story was taking place on social networks like twitter
in fact the web broke the news first
http://tweetnews.me
i think aggregating traditional, reliable news in a social context is the key right there
Instead of going to the store or having one delivered to you in the mail, you no longer receive a PHYSICAL piece of "media" (disc or memory card, or whatever). You receive whatever data/info/program you are interested in via a digital download which then resides as a digital copy on YOUR storage media....harddrive, disc, memory card, usb flash drive, someone else's server, etc.
You no longer obtain and own a physical "thing". You now secure the rights to something in a digital format. In many cases, you may not even actually "own" it... you are only granted a limited license to use it according to "their" terms.
http://www.captunes.com/top-rated/top-100-songs-today
http://www.captunes.com/top-rated/top-100-albums-today
- by davide1982 August 21, 2009 9:39 AM PDT
- P Diddy had very precisely described the genius of Michael Jackson: "He showed that you can actually see the beat. He made the music come to life. He made me believe in magic."
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(24 Comments)Check other notable tributes paid to Michael Jackson by peers:
http://www.tributespaid.com/category/m/michael-jackson