When Google goes Wrong…
Filed in: Google — February 1st, 2009Google flags every search results as malware at 6:30am to 7:25am at 31 Jan, 2009 PST.
Google flags every search results as malware [image from TechCrunch]
I was watching TV and my elder brother told me that the Google search results are not accessible. I checked Google on my mobile. The Google for mobile was working fine but the classic Google was adding a text “This site may harm your computer” on every search result.
A quick check on my twitter account (@liewcf) showed that it was Google’s fault, which was fixed after couple minutes.
The official Google blog responded about the error, a human error.
Google flags search results with the message “This site may harm your computer” if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously. Unfortunately, the URL of ‘/’ was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and ‘/’ expands to all URLs.
As a result, every site was flagged as malware by Google.
The Google team reverted the backup after found the problem and it was disappearing between 7:10 and 7:25am.
Peace.
My two cents
Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Google is not an exception. The world’s largest and most popular search engines was not functioning! It was a big hit for Google.
Luckily, we still have the alternative search engines like Yahoo!.
Now, would you think twice before keeping everything on Google?
Tags: malware
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