Earlier this morning I was searching on Google for the Microsoft documents about using system restore. I was suprised when I looked at the first result in Google, which was for Microsoft’s documentation. I was suprised to see a warning from Google that Microsoft’s site may harm my computer. I took a screenshot…
Even more suprising was that Google had also marked the Wikipedia entry for “system restore” as harmful…
It seems Google was manfunctioning this morning and marking every single website in the search results as “harmful”. I went to check Twitter to see if anybody else was experiencing the same phenomenon. Twitter was buzzing with tweets about “This site may harm your computer” and numerous individuals other than myself had noticed that Google search was malfunctioning.
Maybe Google needs to stop spinning their wheels by launching new products and services until they get a handle on their primary business of search. It’s incedents like this that show how dangerous it is to have one company controlling internet search to the extent that Google does. I like Google just as much as anybody else but I there is a dire need for healthy competition in the search industry. Using only one search eangine is not unlike getting your news from only one news source.
Update: Google has released an official statement on their blog passing the buck on StopBadware.org…
What happened? Very simply, 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. We do this to protect our users against visiting sites that could harm their computers. We maintain a list of such sites through both manual and automated methods. We work with a non-profit called StopBadware.org to come up with criteria for maintaining this list, and to provide simple processes for webmasters to remove their site from the list. We periodically update that list and released one such update to the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here’s the human error), the URL of ‘/’ was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and ‘/’ expands to all URLs. Fortunately, our on-call site reliability team found the problem quickly and reverted the file. Since we push these updates in a staggered and rolling fashion, the errors began appearing between 6:27 a.m. and 6:40 a.m. and began disappearing between 7:10 and 7:25 a.m., so the duration of the problem for any particular user was approximately 40 minutes. Source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/this-site-may-harm-your-computer-on.html |
Quite scary explaination from Google as to why it happened. Most software and internet development companies review new updates in a test bed. Once everything looks fine, they move it into production. I’m suprised Google’s team of programmers on this specific project didn’t catch the error before it went into production. Somebody must have been asleep on the job….
Does Anybody Smell Another Google Lawsuit ?…
I was searching for the Microsoft documents on using system restore and to my suprise, when I looked at the first result in Google, I was confronted with a warning from Google that Microsoft’s site may harm my computer. I took a screenshot in disbeli…
This won’t really impact the big guys but think of all the damage this did to bloggers and small-tim webmasters who may have lost out on potential visitors.
Could Google really be sued over this? It could have been hackers doing the dirty work here.
Why does Google even put this in the search results? They are not an AV company. When will they stop trying to do everything under the sun and finally do one thing right.
I was searching for my site this morning and saw the warning on my site. I even called my hosting company to see if I had been hacked or something.
So I do a google search, and the link I click on comes up with a page that says “Warning, this site may harm your computer” and some blah blah about malware. The two problems with this message are a) it was a wikipedia page I was linking to, and b) it’s doing this with EVERY SINGLE search result.
I just scanned my computer thinking I had some weird malware. This was the first site I thought to check to see if others are having this problem. Glad to know it’s not just me.
Yes, I noticed it too. Even dot-gov sites have the warning from Google. The only ones I notice that don’t have that warning are their “sponsored links”.
Haaha, Google really dropped the ball this time.
Today everything I get back is labeled as malicious by google, even the google site.
I had this same problem. Check your time/date on the lower right of your screen.
Mine showed a date in June 2009, which then made the security certificates “expired”.
Now I’m wondering how the date was changed.
Please post back and let me know if this fixes the problem.
Everything is back to normal now. Google has fixed the problem.
[…] Google Warns “This Website May Harm Your Computer” - Does Anybody Smell Another Google Lawsuit? (affiliatebestprograms.com) - January 31, 2009It seems Google was manfunctioning this morning and labelling every website in the search results as “harmful”. Of course, Twitter was flowing with the tweets about “This site may harm your computer”… […]
I really don’t see how Google could be held liable for a lawsuit on this one. It was a programming error or a hacking incedent. No damage was done so where do you get off saying that Google could be sued ?
Google has fixed this problem already. I didn’t get to see my site with the warning on it :-(
Google says it’s Stopmalware that did it. And Stopmalware denies with that. Then who was responsible for that?
Lol
Lol , google is harmful , google is not only harmful but the devil !
I think google is shameless. They should close down their site after such incident.
P.S.: Just kidding. We love you Google.
Today i was checking my website’s pages in search engine and i was very worried when i saw “This site may harm your computer” with every page of my website. I was fainted but after that i searched for Google and Yahoo and same was with them . Isn’t that funny? This was my first experience with a google bug :d
Update: Google released an official explaination on their blog…
What happened? Very simply, 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. We do this to protect our users against visiting sites that could harm their computers. We maintain a list of such sites through both manual and automated methods. We work with a non-profit called StopBadware.org to come up with criteria for maintaining this list, and to provide simple processes for webmasters to remove their site from the list.
Just goes to show that when you rely on other comapnies for your data, things can get screwed up real quick.
I don’t believe that this type information should be displayed in search results anyway. Most spyware and malware is really affiliate tracking cookies and stuff like that. Google logs far more data about web users than any other company but they never get marked as spyware.
How can google make a determination if a site is bad for my computer?
I’ll bet you click-thru rates for Adwords ads go thru the roof while EVERY site in the organic index is “harmful to users computers”…..
Just a thought.
It’s the biggest messup I’ve ever seen in the history of the internet.
Has anybody seen the story making it into mainstream news yet?
It is amazing how far the Internet seemed to ground to a halt for the 40 minutes or so that Google was down (I had less Internet savvy friends desperate the research information and the only easy solution I could suggest was to be move them to a different search provider - I doubt they’ve changed back). Obviously some countries may have been asleep at the time this happened, but to a substantial portion of the world this was big news.
Google knows everything. But still have some problems. I think the algoritma is not still ideal.