Google's Web site was inaccessible for a brief time Saturday and some visitors reported being rerouted to another site, leading some to believe that the search giant had been hacked.

The site was down from 3:45 to 4 p.m. PST, Google spokesman David Krane told The Associated Press.

"It was not a hacking or a security issue," Krane. He said the problem was related to the DNS (Domain Name System), which routes one's Internet protocol address to the appropriate Web site that the user wants to visit. If the DNS system goes down, Web pages requested usually do not appear or take a long time to load.

"Google's global properties were unavailable for a short period of time," Krane said. "We've remedied the problem and access to Google has been restored worldwide."

Rumors that the site was hacked began when visitors were reportedly rerouted to SoGoSearch.com.

News Source: C|net