Google thinks websites are EVIL!

Google Search Engine had a real serious problem! I think it was global because I asked several friends on different computers and everyone told me the same thing….For some time Google was evil!

Touch me and I may harm you!

Apparently the problem happened in Google´s Search Engine. When I clicked any of the results, another different page appeared telling me that the site I clicked was dangerous and could nuke harm my computer!

This is what many people, including me, with horror and laughs saw!

Even Google can “harm” your computer! (Click image to witness History!!)

Everything I searched, from any Anime page to the FBI, CNN, GOOGLE….Virtually any random site was “dangerous!”…Now, someone in Google Headquarters made a terrible mistake or Google was hacked.  Have this happened to you? I think this is really the first time I saw Google having this kind of mess.

UPDATE: Google´s explanation of what really happened…a “simple” mistake!!

“This site may harm your computer” on every search result?!?!

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

Source: Google Blog

That´s what you get when you push the wrong buttons!

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