Google slashes the Internet

02.02.2009
If the world ever needed proof that it's Google's Web and we just surf on it, we got it in spades last Saturday morning when the Search Engine That Roared declared the entire Internet one steaming fetid pile of manure.

(Though, given all the malware-laden crap that's been landing in my inbox lately, I'm starting to think they had a point.)

For about 40 minutes early on the morning of January 31, ," and directed users to visit StopBadware.org to learn more.

The surge in traffic resulted in , bringing down its servers. They seem to be good sports about it, though -- possibly because Google is a key sponsor of the nonprofit org that runs the site.

At first, Google pointed the finger at StopBadware, claiming it had supplied the search mavens with a bad list of verboten URLs. Then in a classic "oops, my bad" moment, Google fessed up. In an , the wrote:

What happened? Very simply, human error. Google flags search results with the message "This site may harm your computer" if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously. ...We maintain a list of such sites through both manual and automated methods....We periodically update that list and released one such update to the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here's the human error), the URL of '/' was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and '/' expands to all URLs.