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CTV.ca | CTV News, Shows and Sports - Canadian Television Google crippled by virus as investors wooed CTV.ca News Staff Web surfers heading to the most popular search engine online left disappointed for a few hours Monday, as Google suffered a temporary shutdown due to the MyDoom virus. For at least four hours starting at approximately 11:15 ET Monday morning, online information-seekers weren't getting the answers they wanted from the search site. While Google's homepage remained viewable, attempts to conduct a search returned the message: "Server Error. The service you requested is not available at this time." The unusual interruption was reported by users in Canada, the U.S., France and the U.K., though some surfers continued to enjoy normal service throughout the day. There were also reports other leading search engines may have been affected, though it's unclear which sites were involved, and to what extent. In the hours immediately following the onset of the problem, a spokeswoman for Google told CTV.ca that company officials were aware of the problem. By mid-afternoon, however, another statement from the company assured users the problem had been tracked. "The Google search engine experienced slowness for a short period of time earlier today because of the MyDoom virus, which flooded major search engines with automated searches," the company said in a statement to CTV News.