According to a press release form Google, the surge in Michael Jackson related searches on Thursday, as news about the singer’s death first began to circulate, was originally interpreted as an attack on Google News. People who typed ‘Michael Jackson’ or anything related into Google News were confronted with this message, “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.”

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