By David Meyer
Monday, June 29 2009 09:52 AM
URL: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/communications/0,39044192,62055535,00.htm

The breaking news of Michael Jackson's death on Thursday triggered an alert at Google over a potential malware attack.

As reports began to circulate, first of Jackson's hospitalization, then of his death, some people searching for news on Google found themselves looking at a page that said: "We're sorry, but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application."

The page asked users to enter a Captcha code in order to continue their searches.

"When you get huge volumes of searches, an interstitial page comes up to make sure we aren't coming under attack," a spokesman for the company told ZDNet Asia's sister site ZDNet UK last week. "The volumes searching for Michael Jackson during the night were such that a page did come up, and it slowed things down for a short period."

Asked how the volume of searches compared with other breaking-news events, Google's spokesman described the spike as "volcanic"--the term used in the Google Trends labs project to define the highest level of search volumes.

"This is one of the biggest [spikes] we've seen in recent times," the spokesman said.