More than three-quarters of Internet worms and viruses use Google as their default search engine to retrieve email addresses, according to a study by eWeek, a computer technology trade journal.Google suffered an onslaught of automated searches Monday as unwitting computer users infected their computers with the latest MyDoom computer virus. This variant of the virus expands on previous versions by searching the Internet for additional email addresses to infect. According to technology experts, the sub-variants of this virus that are spreading the fastest are those which make use of the Google search engine. The virus has also affected several other search engines, including Yahoo, Lycos and AltaVista, but to a far lesser extent.
"Google is proud to host the world's largest and freshest index of the World Wide Web," says Google co-founder Larry Page. "We're also quite popular, it seems, among those who surf the darker side of the 'Net."
According to eWeek, a vast majority, 78%, of the brunt of the MyDoom virus wrath was born by Google. Yahoo came in second with 15%, with Lycos and AltaVista soaking up most of the rest of the hits.
For several hours on Monday, people around the globe found Google and the other search engines to be slow or completely unresponsive. Google has responded with additional server capacity and countermeasures to reduce the flow of data from the computer viruses.
