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

[Mathieu O'Neil]

BBC NEWS

'Human error' hits Google search

Google's search service has been hit by technical problems, with users 
unable to access search results.

For a period on Saturday, all search results were flagged as 
potentially harmful, with users warned that the site "may harm your 
computer".

Users who clicked on their preferred search result were advised to pick 
another one.

Google attributed the fault to human error and said most users were 
affected for about 40 minutes.

"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.

When Google updated the list on Saturday, it mistakenly flagged all 
sites as potentially dangerous.

"We will carefully investigate this incident and put more robust file 
checks in place to prevent it from happening again," Ms Mayer wrote.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/7862840.stm

Published: 2009/01/31 17:37:41 GMT



On 01/02/2009, at 2:45 PM, Alex Halavais wrote:

> I believe it was a pretty catastrophic outage. Students in my class
> were amused by the coincidence; I started a course on search engines a
> week back with reference to "When the Search Engine is Missing" (video
> lecture here: 
> http://alex.halavais.net/search-engine-society-lecture-1/).
>
> I'm bummed by the hamstringing of human subjects restrictions. This
> would have been a great opportunity to roll out an instant survey to
> see what the effects of missing Google (even for a few hours) might
> have been. But my guess is that ship has pretty much already sailed.
>
> - Alex
>
>
>
> -- 
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> // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur
> // http://alex.halavais.net
> //
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Dr Mathieu O'Neil
Adjunct Research Fellow
Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute
College of Arts and Social Science
The Australian National University

E-mail: mathieu.oneil at anu.edu.au
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