Google's corporate information sites appeared to have been hacked this morning. Update, 3.21pm: Google now says the problem is "not a hack, but a bug". Their California offices are waking up and dealing with it now...



Users searching with Google for "Google executives" were given an English link saying "Corporate Information – Google Management" that took them to a page with all information in Chinese – http://www.google.com/corporate/execs.html. The site lists Google's executives, among them Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

Its parent site http://www.google.com/corporate/ which usually gives information about Google's business was also in Chinese and further directing users from there to the new non-censored Chinese version of Google.

The redirection occurs only in some areas, but the failure could be reproduced after the cookies were deleted and when the private browsing mode was turned on.

Google was informed by the Guardian about the problem, and a spokesperson confirmed it, saying they are now investigating the issue.

Update: A Google spokesperson later added: "This is not a hack but rather a bug affecting the language displayed to some users, and we are working to fix it soon."

Google's Executives on the Chinese version

On Monday, Google stopped censoring the Chinese Google search, Google News and Google Images, and redirected search users in China to its uncensored search engine based in Hong Kong, Google.com.hk. Now its US corporate site is partly mirroring the Hong Kong version.

Google's move caused lots of criticism in China yesterday. CCTV, China's state television, broadcasted criticism of Google's decision, and the overseas edition of the People's Daily, the main newspaper of the Chinese communist party, accused Google of collaborating with US spy agencies, Reuters reported.

In January an American internet security firm said it has traced the sophisticated cyber-attack against Google and 30 other US companies back to the Chinese government "or its proxies".