Google Search appears to have gone into a Malware warning meltdown, with every natural search result being flagged with ‘This site may harm your computer’. And that includes Google itself!
Google may harm your computer
My first though was perhaps a local virus, but within seconds of posting about it on Twitter I started getting responses indicating that it’s affecting everyone.
I’m sure it’s probably a momentary problem, but it’s annoying as you have to go to any site via the Google Warning page and then copy and paste the url manually to reach your destination site – and in the meantime there’s no way to tell which sites might really be flagged up as dangerous.
Incidentally, there’s no news yet on the Google Blog, which is also flagged as dangerous via search!
Update: 3.09pm GMT:
News results within search results appear to be fine, and Image Search is OK as well. Meanwhile Twitter has gone into overdrive about it. It seems as if StopBadware.org, which Google uses for Malware information etc, is down, which is a likely cause.
Google News Search and Google Blog Search both appear to be running fine (Via @Jobsworth).
Update: 3.22pm GMT – Normality Restored.
It looks as if the Apocalypse has been postponed as results are back to normal. Although StopBadware is still offline.
Update: 5pm – Official response from Google:
There’s an official response on the Google Blog – An update to the url list of bad sites supplied by StopBadware was released, and…
‘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.’
Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products & User Experience
View Comments so far ↓
1 David Williams // Jan 31, 2009 at 3:23 pm
As of 10:21 EST, it seems to be up and running again.
2 Murphious // Jan 31, 2009 at 3:32 pm
It’s up now, 15 minutes after I experienced the same problem as all the others. I guess they need that malware warning for all the “newbs” out there who don’t use ‘protection’…?
3 Jaxon // Jan 31, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Best Advertizement for Yahoo in a long time
4 Google Broken? - DesignersTalk // Jan 31, 2009 at 3:43 pm
[...] TheWayoftheWeb
5 Dan Thornton // Jan 31, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Cheers for the comments – it certainly seems to have been about 20 minutes of Malware meltdown before recovering.
6 Web White Noise - WWN // Mar 11, 2009 at 11:58 pm
Google Fail!…
Thats right, Google just fell over.
And no, my typeing ‘Google’ into Google didn’t cause it, any search I conduct returns the results with every single page link having the message “This site……
7 Curmudgeonly Ad Guy // Dec 16, 2009 at 7:16 pm
This bug reminds me of the fact that Google and Firefox are actually blocking access to certain websites. That is, if you enter the URL of a website you know and trust into FF, if they have deemed that website unsafe, they just outright BLOCK it. They do not ask you if you still want to visit it, they dont give you a way around, they just deny you access. I have done my due diligence in researching antivirus and anti-malware software and I feel comfortable letting them keep me protected. I don;t need FF or Google just blocking sites from me. They are not big brother, even tho they steal my information like BB does…
8 Remove Spyware // Jun 21, 2010 at 2:03 pm
Google has fixed the bug:)
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