Google Emoji Search Faces A Strange Glitch

For a short time, Google struggled with a strange problem in the search function: users who asked questions like “How many emojis on iOS ” (“how many emojis on iOS”) got an error message instead of an answer.

According to Bleeping Computer, Google search crashes when users search for certain terms in combination with emojis. These are regular search phrases and not combinations with special characters. The problem was first noticed by users who wanted to know how many emojis are available for certain operating systems or devices.

A user with the identifier llui85 at Hacker News compiled a list of some phrases that seem to cause the Google search problem when entered into the search bar without quotation marks. The following search queries caused problems with Google:

Search Queries:

• “How many emojis on iOS”
• “How many emojis on Apple “
• “How many emojis on Windows”
• “How many emojis on Lumia”
• “How many emojis Lumia”
• “How many emojis in iOS”
• “How many emojis inside iOS”

The error was then displayed:

The Error message

“Server Error. We’re sorry but it appears that there has been an internal server error while processing your request. Our engineers have been notified and are working to resolve the issue. Please try again later.”(Server error. We’re sorry, but it appears that an internal server error occurred while processing your request. Our technicians have been notified and are working to resolve the issue. Please try again later.)
The question “How many iOS Emoji” worked, but only very slowly.

Originally it was believed that the issue only affected one country-specific domain, Google.co.nz. But the error was only noticed there first – google.com and google.de were also affected. In the meantime, however, the spook seems to be over and the Google search returns normal result pages.