Google Mistakenly Labels the Internet as Malware
By Om Malik
Google labeled the entire Internet as malware earlier this morning (between 6:30 a.m. PST and 7:25 a.m. PST), warning visitors that pretty much every web site could harm your computer. The news spread across the blogophere and Twitterverse pretty quickly. Many speculated that the problem arose from Google’s effort to integrate the malware-blocking functionality promoted by stopbadware.org. Google confirmed that in a blog post. “What happened? Very simply, human error,” said Marissa Mayer, V-P of search products & user experience:
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.
I have two thoughts about this problem. First, it shows that Google has become the single point of failure in our digital lives, whether we like it or not. These problems — human errors, as Mayer calls them, are not going to go away, as the company becomes bigger, offers more services and extends its control over our digital lives.
Secondly (and more importantly), if all of us are going to be obsessing about Google’s epic fail on a Saturday morning, then maybe the message should have said: “This computer may harm your life.” OK people, go and enjoy the weekend. I am about to do the same!
