[Air-L] 'Human error' halts Google search

[Malte Ziewitz]

Mathieu O'Neil wrote:
> BBC NEWS
> 
(...)
> 
> "What happened? Very simply, human error," wrote Marissa Mayer, vice 
> president, search products and user experience, on the Official Google 
> Blog.
> 
> The internet search engine works with stopbadware.org to ascertain which 
> sites install malicious software on people's computers and merit a warning.
> 
> Stopbadware.org investigates consumer complaints to decide which sites 
> are dangerous.
> 
> The list of malevolent sites is regularly updated and handed to Google.

Technically, stopbadware.org just provides the criteria and guidelines 
for identifying "badware." Based on these guidelines, Google generates 
its own list of badware URLs.

This subtle distinction became the cause for an interesting struggle for 
  (or against) accountability in yesterday's events. Ultimately, this 
let to Google revising their original blog post (this happened after the 
BBC report was published if I convert time zones correctly):

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/this-site-may-harm-your-computer-on.html

http://blog.stopbadware.org/2009/01/31/google-glitch-causes-confusion

Best,

Malte