engine - 11:15 am on Oct 8, 2012 (gmt 0)

Microsoft wrongly made automated requests for pages on the BBC website to be removed from Google due to "copyright infringements". The system also mistakenly requested the removal of content created by CNN, Wikipedia and the US government. The sites were wrongly identified by software which crawls the web for attempts to illegally share Microsoft content.Report: Microsoft Wrongly Targeting Sites With Takedown Requests To Google [bbc.co.uk]

The request, sent in July, contained hundreds of addresses, and appeared to pinpoint articles and pages containing the number 45. For example, a BBC page following Day 45 of the Olympic Torch Relay was on the takedown list, as was a Wikipedia article on Caesar's Civil War, which ended in 45BC.