Google Flags Whole Internet As Malware

Google placed the internet on a blacklist today after a mistake caused every
site in the search engine's result pages to be marked as potentially harmful and
dangerous.
The problem affected internet pages across the whole planet, and lasted for around
40 minutes before engineeers were able to fix it.
The glitch centred on Google's malware detector, which is designed to keep internet
users from visiting sites Google believes may install malicious software when users
browse them. Google blamed "human error" when an engineer tried to add one web
address to the list of those deemed suspicious, and mistakenly added them all.
"We periodically receive updates to that list and received one such update to
release on 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. Fortunately, our on-call site reliability team found the problem quickly and
reverted the file," Google said in its official blog.
The incident occurred at around 2.40pm.
Apart from lost advertising revenue which one expert estimated at $2-3m (1.42m) the incident is embarrassing for the world's most popular search engine,
known for its reliability.
Users across the globe were puzzled as all searches were met with the warning:
"This site may harm your computer."
A spokesman for Google said: "A lot of people were woken up in California when the
problem broke. Clearly Google was labelling every website as malware."
Google's paid search results appeared not to have been affected.
Clicking the message takes people to a support page from Google (image below),
but this is being bombarded with millions of people right now so its very slow to
respond. I saw the page briefly, and it pointed to StopBadware.org (which is
obviously also loading slowly or not at all right now).
Update: it seems to be fixing itself. Im having no more issues on Google Belgium,
still getting warning messages for malicious software when I search Google.com.
Also, it only seems to occur when youre searching as a signed-in user now.
Update 2: it seems to be fine now. Lasted about 15 minutes (Google says the
window was more like 55 minutes). You can take a deep breath now and go on with
whatever you were doing before :)

Now we just have to wait for Google to tell us what went wrong. Its quite clear that
a meltdown of this size, no matter how short it was, will be the topic of discussion
for the coming days (and not only at the Googleplex, Id wager).
Update 3: Marissa Mayer has now explained the error on the Official Google Blog.
She puts it down to human error after a / was mistakenly put in an update sent
from the non-profit StopBadware.org to Google (the non-profit also posted more
details). The result was every URL in Googles database being classified as
malware until the stray / was removed. Clicking the message takes people to a
support page from Google (image below), but this is being bombarded with millions
of people right now so its very slow to respond. I saw the page briefly, and it
pointed to StopBadware.org (which is obviously also loading slowly or not at all right
now).

Update: it seems to be fixing itself. Im having no more issues on Google Belgium,

still getting warning messages for malicious software when I search Google.com.
Also, it only seems to occur when youre searching as a signed-in user now.
Update 2: it seems to be fine now. Lasted about 15 minutes (Google says the
window was more like 55 minutes). You can take a deep breath now and go on with
whatever you were doing before :)
Now we just have to wait for Google to tell us what went wrong. Its quite clear that
a meltdown of this size, no matter how short it was, will be the topic of discussion
for the coming days (and not only at the Googleplex, Id wager).
Update 3: Marissa Mayer has now explained the error on the Official Google Blog.
She puts it down to human error after a / was mistakenly put in an update sent
from the non-profit StopBadware.org to Google (the non-profit also posted more
details). The result was every URL in Googles database being classified as
malware until the stray / was removed.
Nov. 10, 1999: Metric Math Mistake Muffed Mars Meteorology Mission
1999: A disaster investigation board reports that NASAs Mars Climate Orbiter
burned up in the Martian atmosphere because engineers failed to convert units from
English to metric.
The $125 million satellite was supposed to be the first weather observer on another
world. But as it approached the red planet to slip into a stable orbit Sept. 23,
the orbiter vanished. Scientists realized quickly it was gone for good.

It was pretty clear that morning, within half-an-hour, that the spacecraft had more
or less hit the top of the atmosphere and burned up, recalled NASA engineer
Richard Cook, who was project manager for Mars exploration projects at the time.
A NASA review board found that the problem was in the software controlling the
orbiters thrusters. The software calculated the force the thrusters needed to exert
in poundsof force. A separate piece of software took in the data assuming it was in
the metric unit: newtons.
The units thing has become the lore, the example in every kids textbook from that
point on, Cook said. Everyone was amazed we didnt catch it.