Strange Things Afoot at the Google Blog

A bunch of people noticed a very odd post on the google blog tonight that suggested they were cancelling their click-to-call service (see below, captured by John Resig). Just a month ago Google expanded the click-to-call program into the UK.

The post was at googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/google-click-to-call-project-cancelled.html, although it has been removed now. Even though the blog post was quickly taken down, a number of people saw it on the blog or in their RSS readers. The message itself was certainly suspicious as it contains numerous spelling and grammatical errors as well as the curious last sentence saying that the “message has been translated using Google language tools.”

So the real story here is that the Google blog has been hacked. This is a bit of an embarrassment, although it is not nearly as bad as when Google deleted the blog accidentally in March of this year.