Google says a glitch caused the “Chinese” biography bug

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» IT Security NEWS

» 26 March 2010

According to Google, the appearance of executive biography page of their senior executives written in Chinese scripts was caused by unknown faults in the search engine. There were speculations that this was job done by hackers who have politically-ill intentions. However, the web giant denied the assumptions of many regarding the matter.

Unfiltered results through Hong Kong servers

Google transferred their search engine from China to the servers found in Hong Kong. This new base of search engine, Google.com.hk, allows web users to access unfiltered search results. And on Tuesday, one day after the server relocation, the malfunction in the search engine occurred and caused ruckus within the Chinese online community.

The web giant was being pressured by unknown Chinese rebels for many weeks already as these people were discovered to have been possessing Google webmail accounts. Also, Google’s intellectual property was under siege as various malicious programs were used in order to hack the web company. In response to this, the Chinese authorities prevented online users from accessing the search engine based at Hong Kong.

Chinese-translated biography bug unleashed

On the same day, the biographical data of Google executives like Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin, and Larry page were transcribed into Chinese characters. Included in the Chinese-translated biography was the list of careers of these Google administrators. The following facts were seen by some online users while utilizing the Google search engine.

Inconsistency was apparent

The Guardian was the first to announce the presence of the glitch in the web giant’s search engine. According to its broadcast, this bug was not seen in all parts of the world and not all online users saw the Chinese-scripted biography. Also, only a part of the results in the Hong Kong server appeared on the US corporate website.

Fault deemed as a form of vengeance

Many people assumed that this incident is a payback for the web giant’s resolution of transferring the China search engine into another server. People believed that this was instigated by attacking the Google site via a DNS hack. Some, however, deemed the incident as a mild method of destruction directed to the site.

Google, however, clarified that the flaw was not done by any hackers as contrary to what others speculated. In their Twitter account, the web giant announced that they already repaired the glitch and they also reiterated that the incident was not a case of hacking.

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