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On Tuesday, Google Image Search and Google News experienced a disturbing issue: for many users, all or most of the images on search results pages were pictures of a Russian car crash that killed three people. People in many different parts of the world reported the problem, suggesting it wasn’t a localized issue.
Almost immediately, speculation began to suggest that Google had been hacked, perhaps by someone wanting to make a political statement about the situation in Ukraine. Others suggested that perhaps Google’s developers simply made a mistake when updating the search engine’s algorithm.
Google hasn’t yet released a definitive statement explaining the problem, but it appears to be suggesting that its own developers were at fault. A company spokesperson told one media outlet, “the least we could have done was show everyone micropigs instead.”
