What made google search crash?

Question

I was googling randomly and then I entered 999999..999999 which led to the linked page. Though not a crash, but since it said that it detected a huge traffic from my computer which was not the case, I used the term crash. It did mention, though as the last explanation point, that it might have been caused by a term that is actually used by robots, it still didn't clarify what kind of robots was it talking about.

Was the reference to the crawlers and bots, or did it mean something different entirely?

Richard H · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-05T13:11:09.123

17

It's because this is a range search, as denoted by the "..". See here for discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2948873

I don't think there was any definitive answer but a number of hypotheses, in particular this one seems reasonable:

The reason for this is that you can google ranges of numbers, and people a couple of years ago were using this feature to find credit card numbers that were posted online, eg searching for 4000000000000000..4999999999999999

Whether for cc numbers or something else, it's likely a defence against dubious searches: the error message indicates that the search violates Google's ToS.

edited Sep 05 '11 at 13:11

answered Sep 05 '11 at 13:05

Richard H

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The page Google sends you to could really be more helpful. – 472084 Sep 05 '11 at 13:12
@Jleagle I hyperlinked the question to the google result. – Harsh Sep 05 '11 at 13:14
Sorry I meant that the information Google actually put on that page could be more helpful :) – 472084 Sep 05 '11 at 13:17

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 05 '11 at 13:10

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According to hacker news Google (used to) interpret this as a search for a number range, but has disabled the feature partially or completely because it was used to look for credit cards or SSNs accidentially or maliciously available online, which could then be used for identity theft.

answered Sep 05 '11 at 13:10

Michael Borgwardt

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I guess it is a complete removal as [000000..000000](http://www.google.co.in/search?gcx=w&ix=c2&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=000000..000000) also leads to the same page. – Harsh Sep 05 '11 at 13:39
this means that the reason for that page is definitely not MapReduce's extraneous computations as one of the Hacker News' comment suggested. It's more for security reasons. anyways the funny thing is bing allows this search and with some search tweak, one may land on some cc numbers then. – Harsh Sep 05 '11 at 13:55

What made google search crash?

2 Answers2