Earlier today it seems that the internet went a bit lopsided. I was out and about at the time, but through my iPhone and the tweetie app I was able to follow a steadily increasing rate of twitter messages concerning google searches and their "this site may harm your computer" message. Google posted a response about this;
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 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....
...Thanks for your understanding.
Of course anyone can make a mistake, but it suddenly brings one thing in sharp focus. This was one small error from Google, and it caused a huge problem worldwide because of their far reaching hold over internet search.
The words "basket", "eggs" and "all in one" come to mind, and make me wonder what might happen with a much more serious google related problem...
