Google breaks down and has a fit with malware

Google broken

*** UPDATE 01-02-09: A full update of what happened can be found here http://tinyurl.com/bfmstr. The short of it is that it was human error during a routine update of Google’s bad URL’s list, someone put in “/” as a value of a bad URL so all sites were tagged as malware. the problem was fixed and lasted an hour. ******

Its Saturday the 31st and something crazy is up with Google, was just trying to get to Wikipedia and got the above results (all saying “This site may harm your computer”) and it seems its not just Wikipedia, it also produces Malware warning for many other popular websites and blogs including TechCruch who have a nice write up on it here http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/31/google-flags-whole-internet-as-malware/.

Seems its effecting Google South Africa, UK, most of western Europe and even some people from the States.

Below is the malware warning page that comes up when you try and go to a flagged site, even if you wanted to go and view the site regardless of the warning you cant as there is no option to move forward.

(It seems to be fixing itself as i type but still comes up with malware warnings randomly)

Have a fab weekend and it makes you wonder what would happen if Google broke! better back up those Gmail accounts with their new offline service now 🙂

Google broken2

Chris

Adman at Ogilvy

3 Comments

  1. Thanks for highlighting this… Always wondering how Google decides which sites may be considered as Malware / dangerous?

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