I have been using the google personal homepage www.google.com/ig as my home page, since the day it came out. I use it on several browsers on several different computers. This morning, when I opened up Firefox at my work computer, I got a google capcha screen, that I have shown below: (Click to view full size)
I figured it must be some virus or spyware, but multiple scans revealed nothing, and I keep a close eye on my computer too. So I tried IE7 and got the same result. When I tried to access the homepage from my home computer via my vnc connection, it came up just fine. So I rebooted my work pc. Same thing. I then tried it from another work computer(a brand new Dell laptop right out of the box no spyware there). And got the same capcha screen! So my conclusion is that google is blocking my IP address from the home page. Everytime I reopen my browser I have to reenter a capcha code. This is pretty annoying, since I open my browser a lot. If it doesn’t go away in the next day or two, I am definitly going to move my homepage to something else. Has this happened to anyone else?
Update:
I learned from some comments on Digg, that this is related to some Di Vinci Code Quest that Google is running from the personalized homepage. I’m not sure why I was affected, but it seems that this has happened to a lot of people. The Quest is ending soon, so it should soon return to normal.
It seems to have started today, but only to people who have personalized their Google home page. The regular Google pages are OK. It _is_ a PITA, but will probably go away in the next day or two.
It would be interesting to spot a geographical pattern (is it only US users, or international ones too)?
Happened to me as well, I’m in the US.