In case you missed it, Google, in a glimpse (40 minutes approximately) of what seemed like eternity to most internet addicts, marked all search results, including google.com as malware.
Marissa Mayer explained in the Google Blog that the problem occurred due to a slash (‘/’) being added to the list of malware sites which propagated to all search results and that they get their list of malware sites from StopBadware.org who in turns explains that changes to their listing should not affect Google search results (in an attempt to distance themselves from the glitch which was obviously a human error on Google’s side and not StopBadware.org’s side)
If you did a Google search between 6:30 a.m. PST and 7:25 a.m. PST this morning, you likely saw that the message “This site may harm your computer” accompanied each and every search result. This was clearly an error, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience caused to our users.
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 work with a non-profit called StopBadware.org to get our list of URLs. StopBadware carefully researches each consumer complaint to decide fairly whether that URL belongs on the list. Since each case needs to be individually researched, this list is maintained by humans, not algorithms.We periodically receive updates to that list and received one such update to release on 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.
Thanks to our team for their quick work in finding this. And again, our apologies to any of you who were inconvenienced this morning, and to site owners whose pages were incorrectly labelled. We will carefully investigate this incident and put more robust file checks in place to prevent it from happening again.
Thanks for your understanding.
Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products & User Experience
The Google Blog has since been updated to eliminate any confusion after StopBadware.org responded with:
Posted by Maxim Weinstein 16 hours ago
This morning, an apparent glitch at Google caused nearly every [update 11:44 am] search listing to carry the “Warning! This site may harm your computer” message. Users who attempted to click through the results saw the “interstitial” warning page that mentions the possibility of badware and refers people to StopBadware.org for more information. This led to a denial of service of our website, as millions of Google users attempted to visit our site for more information. We are working now to bring the site back up. We are also awaiting word from Google about what happened to cause the false warnings.
[Update 12:31] Google has posted an update on their official blog that erroneously states that Google gets its list of URLs from us. This is not accurate. Google generates its own list of badware URLs, and no data that we generate is supposed to affect the warnings in Google’s search listings. We are attempting to work with Google to clarify their statement.
[Update 12:41] Google is working on an updated statement. Meanwhile, to clarify some false press reports, it does not appear to be the case that Google has taken down the warnings for legitimately bad sites. We have spot checked a couple known bad sites, and Google is still flagging those sites as bad. i.e., the problem appears to be corrected on their end.
For more information about how the process works and the relative role that Google and StopBadware.org play, please see our Clearinghouse page or this question in our FAQ.
[Update 1:36] Google updated its statement to reflect that StopBadware does not provide Google’s badware data.
[Update 2:35] Hopefully this will be the last update, as Google has acknowledged the error, apologized to its customers, and fixed the problem. As many know, we have a strong relationship with Google, which is a sponsor and partner of StopBadware.org. The mistake in Google’s initial statement, indicating that we supply them with badware data, is a common misperception. We appreciate their follow up efforts in clarifying the relationship on their blog and with the media. Despite today’s glitch, we continue to support Google’s effort to proactively warn users of badware sites, and our experience is that they are committed to doing so as accurately and as fairly as possible.
A PR nightmare looking at the amount of flaming comments on StopBadware.org, eish!
Glad I dont work for Google. I bet someone got fired.
Wasn’t me :p
They did a lot of damage to their own image during that 40 minutes as well as to StopBadware.org’s image when they released the statement, I’m sure there was some sort of penalty for that, although firing the person who caused it sounds more like Microsoft’s way of doing things.