Google going mad?
Posted by Bug-E on May 10th, 2006
I started up Firefox on Windows today, with http://www.google.com/ig being my homepage (Google’s personalized homepage service). I got redirected to http://www.google.com/sorry/?continue=http://www.google.com/ig, which sometimes gave me an HTTP 404 error, and other times it gave me a story along these lines:
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.
We’ll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, if you suspect that your computer or network has been infected, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your systems are free of viruses and other spurious software.
At first they had a CAPTCHA block there, asking me to type the letters/word that appeared in an image. At first I thought it strange, but being on Windows, and even though I have Ad-Aware *and* AVG Anti-Virus running (both just updated to latest definitions), I know they’re not foolproof, so I played along and typed the letters. No submit button mind you! I pressed enter, and get take to an HTTP 404 page. Clearing the cookie didn’t work, even trying in IE didn’t work. I had someone confirm that going to the /ig page on Google works just fine on a non-Windows box (FreeBSD I believe).
Oddness.
Further investigation now shows that Google has *removed* the CAPTCHA bits, and replaced it with a:
We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we’ll see you again on Google.
How nice. 
Going to any other Google service works just fine (I had to log into everything again after clearing the cookies though), so I’m still not sure what’s going on. Maybe they’re just having a bad day… Not nice to be seeing all those 404’s though…
Anybody know what’s going on? What is Google sorry for?
Update:
Lots of people find my comments rss feed when they search for
“but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application”
You might want to come check here too.
Tags: Firefox, personalized homepage, sorry, CAPTCHA, Ad-Aware, AVG, Google, Google sorry
May 10th, 2006 at 20:29:44
I’ve been geeting the same error for about an hour today May 10,2006 2:19 pm EST.
——————–
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.
We’ll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, if you suspect that your computer or network has been infected, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your systems are free of viruses and other spurious software.
We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we’ll see you again on Google.
To continue searching, please type the characters you see below:
————————–
May 10th, 2006 at 20:37:41
Hi. My guess is that the google Da Vinic Quest game has something to do with it. I had been searching all morning just fine. But when the new puzzle came out and I was searching for answers I got the same thing you did. http://www.beginnercode.com/index.php/2006/05/10/google-captcha/.
May 6th, 2007 at 22:13:54
One year later…
And I’m getting the same message when I try to go to blogger! This is strange.
And yes, I found this by searching “We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we’ll see you again on Google.”
May 6th, 2007 at 22:26:52
I just got this for the first time 15 minutes ago. Does it STAY this way or does it go away. I was NOT playing any games or anything. DID click on my history blogger.com/start and not just blogger.com but that should not make a difference – one would like to think!
May 7th, 2007 at 06:33:19
Strange that this is happening a year later still…
It eventually went away after a couple of hours for me.
July 27th, 2007 at 22:25:18
July 27th 2007 – and it is still happening.
My colleagues on the same network at least are getting the captcha and can get in using that. I for some reasons, do not even have that.
Please send some resolution to this. I will definitely add back to this when I have a solution.