Google/s Typo

For those of you who weren't watching, early saturday Google had a slight hiccup. Every site-- on the whole internet-- was labeled as "this site may harm your computer" in a google search.

Google periodically updates the list of bad urls to be caustious about. And the url "/" was included this time, which included all websites. The mistake only lasted a couple of hours before it was noticed (I imagine very quickly and by a lot of people) and rectified.

Having dabbled in computer programming a mistake like this far too easy, and though the solution likely took only seconds to implement - it is not the first thing you would look for. One question in a simple human error like this how can we protect against it? I would imagine that the person responsible will never risk/ putting any unintended slashes again. -- But could the system be redesigned to prevent the issue and reduce the room for Human Error? I don't think it needs to be.

You can read the official google post here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/this-site-may-harm-your-computer-on.html

The discussion on the web has varied from Google's imperfection to hinting at SkyNet or other jokes hinting at Google's super computer deciding to protect us all from the "harmful" web. To me, this error makes sense - I am not threatened by it; I am glad to see how quickly it was fixed and can only guess how difficult it was to identify the problem, and either the creativity to look for something as brilliantly simple as a '/' or the diligence to chug through every entry quickly.