I Really Do Not Need to See This...

This is evil. Thoroughly evil.

I have no idea which Google tool is doing this, so they are all going into the trash right now:

403 Forbidden: Google: Error: We're sorry...

... but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now.

We'll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, if you suspect that your computer or network has been infected, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your systems are free of viruses and other spurious software.

If you're continually receiving this error, you may be able to resolve the problem by deleting your Google cookie and revisiting Google. For browser-specific instructions, please consult your browser's online support center.

If your entire network is affected, more information is available in the Google Web Search Help Center.

We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we'll see you again on Google.

Comments

[Dan]

The good news is that all of the search providers have pretty much the same result quality nowadays. Search is the most important to switch away from Google if we want diversity.

[Lee]

Actually, I think that error message is coming from google independent of your desktop tools. Some combination of signals from your query suggested to google that you were a robot of some kind. Just out of curiosity what were you searching for?

[jerry]

Many people see that when they dive to page 11 or further in a regular google search, even with no google tools loaded. (What's a google tool?, I don't use iGoogle and don't have a google toolbar.) Google is (somewhat ironically) interpreting such queries as the act of someone's bot.

In your case it turns out that if you remove the sorry.google.com stuff your query will resolve just fine. (just kidding of course.)

[Chris]

I get this running on a Mac running TIger. I often run with multiple browsers open, and it seems to come up most often with Safari (3) - which has Inquisitor loaded. But it'll show up in Camino and Firefox as well.

Sometimes deleting cookies helps. My other members of the household - presumably running on the same NATed IP, don't notice it.

It's incredibly frustrating.

[Da' Buffalo Amongst Wolves]

Wow!

I use a Wordpress plugin called 'Redirection' to redirect updated post link requests, and bitbucket sploggers. I HAD been 403 redirecting the sploggers to google, but I'll send them to now!

Meanwhile, in sympathy with your plight, go here: http://whatsmyuseragent.com/

...to see if it's something haywire in your browser.

My user agent string reads thusly:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.14) Gecko/20080404 Firefox/2.0.0.14

...and look here
http://snurl.com/google_sorry_forum
for the google forum thread

Paraniod?
Peek- http://peek.snurl.com/google_sorry_forum

Da' Buffalo, http://sorry.google.com/sorry/?continue=http://razedbywolves.blogspot.com/

[Ken Houghton]

What Everyone Else Said. It's not likely a Google tool that's causing that--I was getting 403s even before I installed Desktop, back in the Dark Ages.

[Jen]

I've gotten this message maybe three times in the last five years. It is bizarre. I do search a fair amount, but certainly not enough to be confused with a robot. I've tried to figure out why with no luck. Once it seemed like it was generated by searching for uncommon words and acronyms, and I could work through it. Didn't it give you a Captcha-type code to type in? I've always gotten that and it usually fixes it. Then it more faithfully serves me up ads that it figures out what I might want to buy.

[Paul Camp]

This is most likely a problem at Google's end, not yours. The latest brainwave from the antivirus crowd is to use behavioral profiles instead of virus signatures to detect malware. There's a problem with this approach -- it never works. Why? Because software is stupid and has no judgment. My employer had Cisco security agent for a while and it did the same thing. Apparently, one of the things it objected to was spawning a large number of processes (what the limit is was never specified). Installing a firewall did this and Cisco killed the installation. It allowed my webcam software to work until one day in the middle of class when it decided that was no longer allowed. After that, I sat down in the IT office and refused to move until they removed it from my computer. The worst of it was that Cisco killed processes silently -- no warning, no error message, no hint of what was happening. The program just wouldn't run. Took about 2 weeks the first time for me to figure out what was going on.

So I'm guessing Google has a profile- based scanner running and just like all the other profile-based scanners in the world, it only sort of works. In the end you'll probably still get it, with or without Google tools, though it may be somewhat less often. At least you got a message.

It isn't really evil, just stupid.