Another high-profile news site that malfunctioned on Thursday was Google News, which interpreted the sharp spike in Jackson-related search queries as an automated attack. "As a result, for about 25 minutes yesterday, when some people searched Google News they saw a 'We're sorry' page before finding the articles they were looking for," Google said in an on Friday. In general, Google saw a "volcanic" spike in Jackson-related search queries on Thursday, when more than 50 of the top-100 searches were related to him, a Google spokeswoman said via e-mail.

Akamai's Net Usage Index for global news sites traffic surged at around 6 p.m. and hit a peak of 4.24 million visitors per minute at 6:26 p.m.

The usage spike also put a strain on online communication tools, like AOL's AIM instant messaging system, which went offline for about 40 minutes on Thursday.

"At AOL our AIM instant messaging service was undergoing a previously scheduled software update which should normally prove routine. It proved not to be. There was a significant increase in traffic due to [Michael Jackson's] news and AIM was down for approximately 40 minutes this afternoon," the company said in a statement.

Micro-blogging site Twitter disabled for several hours a search feature in its homepage, although the company didn't respond to a request for comment as to whether this was caused by a Jackson-related surge in usage.