Just how much should we trust Google?
Everybody uses Google, everybody trusts Google. But when Google makes a mistake, it can have huge repercussions. And for most of us, we just trust Google implicitly. Is this a good thing? Do we have the skills to recognise when Google is experiencing a technical glitch, and find a way to work around the problem?
Google’s most recent problems started over the weekend with Google briefly flagging every site in its search results as containing malware, and possibly damaging your computer. If you didn’t experience it then see the screen shot later in this post. It also meant if you tried to click through to the site, you would bump up against a warning message from Google denying you access to the site.
The bug happened on Saturday afternoon, and during my searching it appeared that Kings College London was distributing malware. I have to say I was not impressed. My daughter hopes to go there, but Google’s pronouncement genuinely had a negative impact on my impression of what is in reality a top class university. Google says… malware.
What if somebody were searching for your business during this glitch? Every prospective customer would have thought your site was distributing malware. And they are probably not reading an explanation like this to say it just wasn’t your fault, and ignore what Google says, that actually you are a very nice company.
Google promptly, and erroneously, pointed the finger of blame at StopBadware.org but in the end admitted it was because some Google human added the entry of a single slash (/) to the list of malware sites. Single slash, of course, means every site on the Internet.
Isn’t amazing how much we trust Google? Sites that rank well must be good. Sites that Google flag as dangerous.. are dangerous.
Google also seems to be having a range of technical problems ranging from sending out unwanted text messages to its people who use their SMS Text Search facility, to rogue documents appearing in Google Docs. Search Engine Land has a good summary of some of this week’s problems.
It’s not been a good week for Google, but credit where credit is due: they do get the problems fixed. I know It is easy to criticise from the peanut gallery, but as an organisation built on trust we come to expect nothing but the best from Google.
Thanks to Techcrunch for this image of what people saw during the Malware glitch:
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