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31 January 2009 21 Comments

Google Blows Up, Suggests the Internet is Harmful

It appears some sort of bug has snuck into the Google secret sauce. A feature that was intended to warn users of potential phishing sites has jumped the shark declaring the internet harmful. That’s right, every single result is deemed by Google to be harmful.

This is surely a bug and will be fixed but these guys really should be running some QA testing before rolling new releases.

picture-6

Modern browsers give the opportunity for you to select your default search provider for your in-browser search box. Traditionally, my search box has been set to Google. However, it’s set to Ask.com right now, and so far I’m happy with the results.

Update: TechCrunch had it first.

Update 2: Google Mea Cupla – it was the fault of a slash (/).

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Written by Aaron Brazell on January 31, 2009

Popularity: 1% [?]

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21 Responses to “Google Blows Up, Suggests the Internet is Harmful”

  1. jmdeur 31 January 2009 at 10:07 am #

    thanks for confirming that it’s google’s problem, not mine. fortunately, yahoo, etc. still work – maybe this is a wakeup call to stop automatically going to google for my search engine needs.

  2. Brendon 31 January 2009 at 10:08 am #

    This is really surprising. You’d think Google would have some contingencies for this.

    With Google down, you can pretty much say the entire WWW is down.

    -brendon.

  3. David Weinstock 31 January 2009 at 10:08 am #

    Good catch. I think this has just happened in the last few minutes and it can’t last for long. But while it lasts, it is a total crash for Google’s search function, there’s no way to get through to a result without copying and pasting its URL into the address bar.

  4. whizkidforte 31 January 2009 at 10:08 am #

    I have that same problem too! I restarted Firefox, then typed “TV” in Google, and all sites have warnings – even reliable ones like the BBC’s!

  5. Nabeel 31 January 2009 at 10:09 am #

    google for google, you get the same

  6. Marc 31 January 2009 at 10:09 am #

    Madness, pense que yo era el que tenia un virus xDDDDD

  7. Mitch 31 January 2009 at 10:10 am #

    It was bound to happen. Lawyers.

  8. Me 31 January 2009 at 10:11 am #

    This appears to be global–at least I know that both US and Australia are currently affected

  9. odograph 31 January 2009 at 10:13 am #

    Found your site googling to see if it was only me (google news sites are not blocked).

    I betcha it was a DB error, someone dropped a table of good/bad sites.

  10. X 31 January 2009 at 10:14 am #

    Use a redirect remover in firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/537

  11. Anony 31 January 2009 at 10:15 am #

    Google is clearly going downhill

  12. Caesar 31 January 2009 at 10:16 am #

    I just noticed the same thing whilst I was working, but it has just been fixed.

  13. Google (at Football365) 31 January 2009 at 10:16 am #

    We’ve got internet AIDS :(

  14. Paul M 31 January 2009 at 10:21 am #

    If I turn filtering off in google preferences it seems to fix it.

  15. Harry Rickards 31 January 2009 at 10:21 am #

    It’s fixed now. Also the googlebadware.user.js greasemonkey script bypassess googles warnings.

  16. Kevin 31 January 2009 at 10:22 am #

    It’s not that I disagree that the interweb is dangerous…. but yeah, this is annoying. I’m actually using yahoo at the moment.

  17. mark 31 January 2009 at 10:26 am #

    THE WHOLE INTERNET MAY HARM YOUR COMPUTER!!!!!

    RUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  18. dre 31 January 2009 at 10:37 am #

    Was quite aggravating this morning, I thought one of my FF plugins was freaking out!

  19. bt 31 January 2009 at 11:12 am #

    Here is a screenshot:

  20. Kuanl 31 January 2009 at 12:08 pm #

    More screenshots of Google blocking Google
    http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2009/01/google-search-malware-warnings/

  21. Beth 31 January 2009 at 11:24 pm #

    What? GOOGLE makes a boo boo? Say it isn’t so. I’ve started using Ask and Yahoo with good results. I do use Google for image searches, though. I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but just after the new year, Google started utilizing their search filtering more-mostly on image searches.