The King of Pop is Dead and nearly took Google with him

Love him or hate him, pretty much everyone on the planet knows who Michael Jackson is and will remember the moment when they heard the news that the controversial pop star had died on Thursday 27th June 2009. A news flash interrupted my weekly fix of Question Time to broadcast the news and I knew this was going to be a big news event. As many other people did I immediately turned to the internet to "Google" the news of his demise. BBC news report states

Millions of people who searched for the star's name on Google News were greeted with an error page

.Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker confirmed this in a statement

"It's true that between approximately 2.40PM Pacific and 3.15PM Pacific, some Google News users experienced difficulty accessing search results for queries related to Michael Jackson and saw the error page,"

It seems however that Google was not the only company who felt the strain of the public scramble to search for more information. The microblogging service Twitter is also reported to have crashed with the sheer volume of traffic by users. The BBC reports

Queries about the star soon rocketed to the top of its updates and searches. But the amount of traffic meant it suffered one of its well-known outages.According to initial data from Trendrr, a Web service that tracks activity on social media sites, the number of Twitter posts Thursday afternoon containing "Michael Jackson" totaled more than 100,000 per hour.

Many celebrities took to the internet in particular using Twitter to pay tribute to Michael Jackson.

Philip Schofield: Now sadly confirmed that we have lost such a gifted performer as MJ. What a terrible tragedy on so many levels.

Stephen Fry: Goodness. Michael Jackson. Poor old soul. Oh dear.

Demi Moore: I am greatly saddened for the loss of both Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. Especially for their children!

Ashton Kutcher: Now the ap confirms aswell. Rip Sending love and light to family and friend but especially his kids.

Miley Cyrus: michael jackson was my inspiration. love and blessings

Samantha Ronson: Say what you want about Michael Jackson's private life (just not near me) but NO ONE can deny his talent, his compassion and his legacy.

Peter Andre: "Michael Jackson dying is absolutely devastating. I am totally shocked. MJ, you're the best."

Lance Armstrong: Terrible news about Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett. My best to their friends, fans, and families.

As I said in the beginning of this article love him or hate him he was certainly one of the most famous popstars on the planet.