Is Google Crazy? Google.com May Harm Your Computer?

Posted by Andrew.

I just searched something in Google, I found all search results are marked "This site may harm your computer", even including Google self!

Google.com May Harm Your Computer?

Here is a screenshot, I searched Google in Google.com on Jan 31, 2009 06:47 PST, the site "Google.com" is marked "This site may harm your computer":

Google.com May Harm Your Computer? Is google crazy? :-)

Update on Jan 31, 2009 07:20 PST:

The problem now appears to be fixed.

Updated on Jan 31, 2009 19:09 PST:

Google Official Blog: What happened? Very simply, human error

Google by now blogged about it, saying:

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

Source: Google Official Blog

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. 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.

Tags: Search Engine | Google