Internet search engine Google said it mistakenly deleted its corporate blog on March 27, allowing an alleged vandal to take control of the site for about a half-hour.
Trey Philips, who identified himself as an Austin, Texas teenager, has claimed responsibility for seizing control of the blog.
Apparently by deleting its blog, Google gave up the right to operate the sites domain name, googleblog.blogspot.com.
Philips writes of registering the site in his name, giving him absolute control, after being tipped off to this situation by an error message he got trying to download the site on March 27.
Given what Philips could have done, he was pretty kind to the Mountain View, Calif.-based company. He left a message on the Web site explaining he was an intruder, and asking Google fix its blog.
To explain the slip-up, Google quotes Homer Simpson, a character from the long-running animated television show, “The Simpsons.”
“Doh,” is what Google wrote here.
This instance, and other Google slip-ups of the recent past, are somewhat out-of-character for the company, which is approaching a decade in business and not usually sloppy in its day-to-day operations.
But that doesnt seem to be true anymore. Take, for example, how a presentation on Google Analyst Day on March 2 mistakenly contained some of Googles financial projections, plus news of upcoming product initiatives.