Google Blacklists The Internet

By Digital Trends Staff Published October 25, 2009

If you tried searching on Google for a short while after 6.30 am Pacific Time on Saturday, you got a shock. Every search result was listed as potentially harmful, with the warning that each site “may harm your computer.”

Anyone clicking on a result was advised to find an alternative. The problem lasted for about 40 minutes.

Writing on the Official Google Blog, Marissa Mayer, vice president, search products and user experience, wrote:

"What happened? Very simply, human error."

Google works with stopbadware.org, a site that investigates complaints over which sites might be dangerous, updates its list and passes it to Google. However, when Google performed its update on Saturday, someone made a small boo-boo and listed every site as potentially dangerous.

As Mayer concluded:

"We will carefully investigate this incident and put more robust file checks in place to prevent it from happening again."

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