Comments on: Google Gets Fearful, Flags Entire Internet As Malware Briefly

By: searchquant

searchquant — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 17:00:56 +0000

I’ll bet sales of McAfee’s SiteAdvisor product went through the roof during that time.

By: javaun

javaun — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 21:49:02 +0000

Danny, first, we’re all glad that your hamster is on the mend.

My wife saw the error at 9:43 EST (6:43 PST) this morning and I had her take a screenshot. She did another sample query for “coffee”, and all the pages said “This site may harm…” She’s 7+ months pregnant, so (according to Dr. Bradley) Google was doing the right thing by restricting her access to caffeine.

I can’t help but recall how, in the wake of Enron, overzealous auditors (i.e. Deloitte, who audited my previous employer) slapped all sorts of ridiculous controls on even the most trivial processes in a gross overinterpretation of Sarbanes Oxley. This took down their core product though, and as you point out Danny, cost them money. As a public company, I’m sure Google is pulling out the controls and process binders as we speak.

By: Cohn

Cohn — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 21:17:39 +0000

Search traffic reaches its lowest trough every Saturday morning.

By: Dugdale

Dugdale — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 20:33:43 +0000

I bet this will make the evening news.

By: chiropractic

chiropractic — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 18:20:10 +0000

I’m just glad it happened while I was sleeping. Chances are I’d have been searching my own sites and pulling hair out wondering why they’d all been flagged as malware. I wonder how many webmasters had that experience.

By: Mikkel deMib Svendsen

Mikkel deMib Svendsen — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 18:09:33 +0000

> And people might actually click MORE on ads due to the malware warnings

Thats exactly what I hear from local advertisers here. So Googles error is costing advertisers money rather than Google.

I think Google should discount ALL AdWords charges for that hour!