Jonathan's Universe

So this Saturday, there was a relatively huge slip-up/oopsies done by Google. They updated their definition file that contains a list of potentially bad sites that host malware and somehow (by human error) a single ‘/’ get entered as an entry. In terms of a file path in this context, the / is interpreted as a wildcard – so every site. Essentially, every single result was marked as a “This site could harm your computer” kind of website in the search results. It even flagged its own sites as dangerous:

Now you see, this is causing web-masters and companies ALL OVER THE WORLD to call foul. Apparently because of this slipup are causing “potential visitors/customers to be steered away from our site because we have been labeled as a malware provider.” Uhm. That’s just stupid. I think anyone with half a brain could see that every single result is being flagged as dangerous… will realize that there must be SOME mistake. I mean it’s kind of obvious. I mean, before this glitch, I’ve only come across a few of these flags… so if all of a sudden every single result from Google starts displaying this flag, especially with a legitimate search string (ie not “cracks for photoshop”, “movie torrents”, etc),  it’s obvious there is a problem.

No doubt some idiot is going to try to initiate either an individual lawsuit or a class-action suit against Google for something along the lines of “defamation of character” or some bogus claim. And I hope it gets shot down.

Accidents happen. Get over it. Get over yourselves.

Though I will say – the guy that made the typo – is probably jobless right now.

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