Google had to apologise after the popular Google.de German search site disappeared following a mistaken transfer to a third party.

Thankfully, our German pals now have the engine back in all it's spam-free, sand boxed glory.

A Google spokesman told The Register: "For a short period of time after midnight on January 23rd, the Google Germany homepage (the page hosted at google.de) was unavailable for some users. We would like to apologize to our German users who have had issues accessing google.de

"We have since corrected the problem and, while due to internet caching some problems may persist, we anticipate that all users will experience normal functionality of google.de soon, the latest by January 24th."

In place of Google's search mask a website hosted by the young German provider Goneo would all of a sudden pop up when users tried to access the search engine at google.de. At the German domain registry DeNIC an investigation into how the hijacking operation was able to succeed is still underway.

A customer of Goneo had, in the course of an automated domain change procedure, claimed in a statement to the Web hoster to be the owner of google.de, Goneo CEO Marc Keilwerth explained.