Google Breaks!: “This Site May Harm Your Computer”
Posted by Simon Perry on 31 January 2009 at 3:06 pm | Tagged as: Google
Google has was broken in a major way. (UPDATE it’s fixed now, phew)
If you search for anything on Google search, the warning message “This Site May Harm Your Computer” appears underneath each of the results.
This may be down to every server on the Internet becoming infected – highly unlikely – Or Google and its security messaging having a major melt down – far more plausible.
Thanks to Daniel Harris for alerted us to this, just before we saw a flood of comment appearing on Twitter. It will be worth watching the hashtag #googlemayharm to watch the growth on knowledge on this.
Wow they have just lost a hell of alot of money
may be this is “minisoft”s trick to google =>
…and we’re back.
Google Crashes! Looks like the massive prevention of links to search results will harm the trust the public may have in Google. I will be very curious to hear of the cause. I am also interested in the massive loss of revenue that may have been the result of this error by Google.
It has been like this since about 14:39 (GMT) – You’d think Google would have some contingency plans for this.
Brendon.
i rekon it was a virus
They are quick! In about 10 minutes they fixed it! For such large servers, so fast…
I was just talking about this with a few others, and came to the same conclusion. Google screwed up big time, or somehow the entire web was infected, regardless of web site size.
Glad it’s back again, I know some will have lost traffic over this!
all your GOOGLE are belong to us
I think that it is time for us to apply for a job at google (because almost certainly someone will get fired…) Big oportunity!!!
How many will be fired for this? As Richard Web Press said, this will seriously dent the perception of Google’s infallibility.
I just noticed this. I don’t think they got hacked, I think it was a glitch from an update of this feature.
Hearing possible problems with gmail wrongly marking emails as spam too.
Definately lost revenue and trust … i have all my non-techy family and friends phoning me to ask why my company website and others are infected.
Bah.
gmail: Lots of emails also showing “Warning: This message may not be from whom it claims to be. Beware of following any links in it or of providing the sender with any personal information. ” with a red background at the top of many gmails.
I was worried about this, thought I had a virus or something. Rebooted PC, scanned with my antivirus software, rebooted router. I even used Safari and live.com – how desperate is that???
Glad we’re back at last though!!!
Does anyone know if Google puts out Press Releases when something as ‘world-visible’ as this happens to their ‘service’? Shows how easily someone could block access to the net, at least via google and other engines; not reassuring.
@Kenny – Love the Safari/ live.com comment :)
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