Pro-Palestinian hackers calling for changing Israel to Palestine on Google Maps hacked the Google “Palestine” Web page.
The hackers on Monday diverted traffic from google.ps and redirected users to a hacked version of Google’s homepage.
“uncle google we say hi from Palestine to remember you that the country in google map not called israel. Its called Palestine,” the hacked page read.
The hackers also said on the page that changing “Isreal” on Google Maps to “Palestine” would be “revolution.” They said to listen to singer Rihanna and “be cool.”
“For a short period, some users visiting google.ps were redirected to a different website,” Google said in a statement Monday. “Google services for the google.ps domain were not hacked. We’ve been in contact with the organization responsible for managing this domain name and the issue should be resolved.”
The google.ps domain reportedly was down for several hours on Tuesday.
Google changed its regional search page from “Palestinian Territories” to “Palestine” in May, six months after the United Nations granted “Palestine” the status of “non-member observer state.”
The change angered Israeli officials, who said the designation prejudged the outcome of the then-stalled peace talks.