For Those Wondering About Public Service Search

Friday, September 15, 2006

We recently learned of a security issue with our Public Service Search service and disabled
login functionality temporarily to protect our Public Service Search users while we were working
to fix the problem. We are not aware of any malicious exploits of this problem and this service
represents an extremely small portion of searches.

We have a temporary fix in place currently that prevents exploitation of this problem and will
have a permanent solution in place shortly. Unfortunately, the temporary fix may inconvenience a
small number of Public Service Search users in the following ways:

• Public Service Search is currently not open to new signups.
• If you use Public Service Search on your site, you are currently unable to log in to make
  changes, but rest assured that Public Service Search continues to function properly on your
  site.
• The template system is currently disabled, so search results will appear in a standard
  Google search results format, rather than customized to match the look and feel of your site.
  However, the search results themselves are not being modified.

If you are a Public Service Search user and are having trouble logging in right now, please sit
tight. As soon as the permanent solution is in place the service will be back on its feet again.
In the meantime, you will still be able to provide site-specific searches on your site as usual.

Google introduced this service several years ago to support universities and non-profit
organizations by offering search capabilities without ads for their sites. Our non-profit and
university users are extremely important to us and we apologize for any inconvenience this may
cause.

Please post any questions or concerns in our
webmaster discussion forum
and we’ll try our best to answer any questions you may have.