Google Attacked By MyDoom Virus

Sometimes you don't realise how much you use something until you lose it. This afternoon, at approximately 5pm British Summer Time, I tried to run a search on Google that resulted in a 503 server error. Pardon? An error on www.google.com? It couldn't be. I redirected my browser to www.google.co.uk and re-ran the search. Again, a 503 server error resulted. I was visibly shaken. I knew it couldn't be a local network problem, but I thought it must be. How could Google be down - a mainstay of the Internet?

I reckon I perform over 50 work related Google searches a day and I wanted to know why my favourite site in the world, why the site I have set as my homepage for years, was not responding now. Instinctively, I went to the Google toolbar and typed in the search terms: "Google, down, attack". Doh! The Google toolbar. If Google isn't working, the damn toolbar isn't going to work!

OK. My only option was another search engine like AltaVista, Yahoo, Lycos or MSN. But I knew that none of these inferior search engines would come close to Google for finding such current information. And anyway, AltaVista did not respond and Yahoo seemed slow. My only option was to visit Scobleizer (a Microsoft Geek Blogger). I knew he'd know what was going on.

And sure enough, on Scobleizer's site, I found a link to www.searchenginelowdown.com who are reporting that a hostile DNS attack was launched against Google this afternoon.

By early evening, Google released a statement saying their site experienced slowness for a short period of time early today because of the MyDoom virus, which flooded major search engines with automated searches. A small percentage of our users and networks that have the MyDoom virus have been affected for a longer period of time. At no point was the Google Web site significantly impaired, and service for all users and networks is expected to be restored shortly.

Well, thank goodness for that. Otherwise, I don't know whether I would have been able to sleep tonight!