Intermittent outages hit Google this morning, sparking fury on Twitter and the discovery that other search engines exist.
Desktop users across Europe expressed their displeasure in a variety of languages after the world’s largest search giant suffered crashes from 10.30am (BST), going offline with a ‘500’ error.
It read: "500. That’s an error, the server encountered an error and could not complete your request.
"If the problem persists, please report your problem and mention this error message and the query that caused it. That’s all we know."
While the problem appeared to be internal server errors, the cause remains mysterious, with Google unavailable for comment on Independence Day.
However, it quickly became evident that only desktop users were hit, as mobile and tablet users weren’t affected, while Gmail and Google Calendar also ran fine.
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The last significant Google search outage occurred in 2004, when a variant of the MyDoom virus attacked its servers repeatedly.
However, it caps a bad week for the tech giant, as it starts deleting search results in line with the EU’s ruling that people have the ‘right to be forgotten‘.
