They are reddish-brown, smaller than an apple seed, have a taste for human blood and when they bite they itch like hell. And now the onward march of the common bedbug has extended into cyberspace.

The search engine giant Google confirmed today that its 9th Avenue offices in Manhattan have been infested with the bugs. Parts of the headquarters, a futuristic space renowned for having a Lego room and scooters for staff to move around, have been found to be harbouring the parasites, prompting the wags at Gawker media group to wonder whether its possible for them to spread via the internet.

Google is the latest victim of an epidemic that has been rampaging through New York over the summer and has the city that normally prides itself on its permanent state of cool in a veritable panic: the blood suckers have wreaked havoc everywhere from the Empire State building to hospital wards, the prosecutor's office in Brooklyn and Time Warner's Manhattan headquarters.

Nobody is immune to the threat, from theatre-goers to dwellers in posh Manhattan condominiums and shoppers. Hollister, the teen clothing store, had to close its flagship outlet in SoHo after employees complained they were being bitten.

The outbreak at Google was disclosed by one of its marketing staff who posted the news on her Twitter feed. "Jeepers, I am not immune to the bedbug panic. Bedbugs have been found at work."

The feed has now been taken down.

Across the city, there has been a two-thirds increase in the number of bedbug cases reported over the past two years, with almost 13,000 calls to the city's helpline over the past 12 months. Last year, a survey suggested one in 15 New Yorkers had become victims, a proportion that is likely to have risen since. Experts put the spread down to the decline in use of the chemical DDT, which was banned in 1972. The US environmental protection agency warned last month of an "alarming resurgence" of bed bugs that was overwhelming public health authorities.The agency has promised to search for a new generation of safe pesticides strong enough to eradicate them.