Google Blog goes off message

By Steve Malone

Posted on 10 Oct 2006 at 10:48

There were red faces in the Googleplex yesterday after the company was forced to admit that the Official Google Blog had been hacked over the weekend. The post was removed and the company was forced to deny claims that its Click-to-Call project had been cancelled.

The unauthorised posting stated:
'Google has decided not to continue with Google Click-to-call project. The project has been in the media on last days because of the notice of Google agreement with e-Bay. We finally consider click-to-call agreement with e-Bay a monopolistic approach that would damage small companies in the CRM area'.

The hack was doubly embarrassing considering that the previous post in the Blog declared 'Google takes security very seriously and designs all of its services and applications to protect your privacy and data security'.

In admitting that the hack had happened Google confessed that its Blogger software contained a vulnerability. Following the embarrassing admission it is likely that Blogger's millions of users will take a dim view of claims that data protection is paramount.

'A bug in Blogger enabled an unauthorized user to make a fake post on the Google Blog last night,' the updated Blog explained, 'claiming that we've discontinued our AdWords click-to-call test. The bug was fixed quickly and the post removed.'

The company also emphasised that the Click-to-call service had not been discontinued and was progressing on schedule and that the company was 'pleased with the results'.