Google Lists Search Results As Malicious

Google went a little haywire recently, tagging Web as malicious except for a few sites. The message “This site may harm your computer” appeared on search results, even in lists that included Google websites. The problem went away 15 minutes later, but not before a lot of people noticed. The search engine giant has provided an explanation regarding the incident:

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. 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.

Problem solved. The Internet returns to its usual activity. At least the folks at Google caught it early and were decent enough to offer an explanation. You can hit the source if you want more details. There’s also a link there that will provide a more technical article on what went wrong. I’m pretty sure the incident is going to add another step in the Q&A process for Google.

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