From The Australian newspaper (online): "PEOPLE using the internet search page Google were stunned to see erroneous messages reporting that every site turned up in their results might be harmful." http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24991997-12377,00.html I don't know how widespread this problem was (possibly only affected Australia?) but I was one of the people affected by this. I wouldn't say that I was stunned. It was more a sense of frustration that my late-night attempt to get linux running properly on my brand-new laptop was made even more painful by my having to cut-and-paste URLs to pages containing potential solutions into another tab, because Google (and StopBadware.org) had erroneously identified the site as potentially hosting malware. It was also a sense of concern that my life is increasingly so contingent on the Google search infrastructure (without the help of those online forums, the new laptop was essentially an expensive paperweight). OK, I acknowledge that I could have used another search engine. Also, at least I could still search, even if it was made more inconvenient. I also acknowledge that the problem was fixed within an hour. But I think it is somewhat troubling that the increasingly important service of online search can be compromised (even just for an hour) by a research project. This might be a bit of a stretch, but what if water or electricity services were inadvertently cut or restricted because of a research project focusing on "consumer complaints". -- ------------------------------------- Dr Robert Ackland Fellow and Masters Coordinator Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute The Australian National University e-mail: robert.ackland@anu.edu.au homepage: http://adsri.anu.edu.au/people/robert.php project: http://voson.anu.edu.au ph./fax: +61 2 6125 0312/+61 2 6125 2992 mail: Coombs Building, 9 Canberra, ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Information about the Master of Social Research (Social Science of the Internet specialisation): http://adsri.anu.edu.au/study/msr.php -------------------------------------
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 -- -- // // This email is // [X] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur // http://alex.halavais.net //
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
-- -- // // This email is // [X] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur // http://alex.halavais.net // _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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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@anu.edu.au Tel.: (61 02) 61 25 38 00 Web: http://adsri.anu.edu.au/people/visitors/mathieu.php Mail: Coombs Building, 9 Canberra, ACT 0200 - AUSTRALIA
Mathieu O'Neil wrote:
BBC NEWS
(...)
"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.
Technically, stopbadware.org just provides the criteria and guidelines for identifying "badware." Based on these guidelines, Google generates its own list of badware URLs. This subtle distinction became the cause for an interesting struggle for (or against) accountability in yesterday's events. Ultimately, this let to Google revising their original blog post (this happened after the BBC report was published if I convert time zones correctly): http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/this-site-may-harm-your-computer-on.h... http://blog.stopbadware.org/2009/01/31/google-glitch-causes-confusion Best, Malte
On Sun, 1 Feb 2009, Robert Ackland wrote:
But I think it is somewhat troubling that the increasingly important service of online search can be compromised (even just for an hour) by a research project.
"Online search" was never compromised. As you also mentioned, Google is not the only search engine. In fact it's only one among many capable search engines. QUT's Amanda Spink and collaborators compared major search engines and found very little overlap which means (my interpretation) that focussing too much on Google is not a good idea anyway. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1150972
This might be a bit of a stretch, but what if water or electricity services were inadvertently cut or restricted because of a research project focusing on "consumer complaints".
Does it really matter what caused Google's problem? The lesson to learn is that more search engine variety is good for all of us (even de-fusing the single-point-of-failure scenario you seem to be concerned about) Best regards christopher -- Dr. Christopher Lueg Professor of Computing University of Tasmania Private Bag 100 Hobart TAS 7001, Australia christopher.lueg@utas.edu.au http://www.cis.utas.edu.au/users/clueg/ CRICOS Provider Code: 00586B
At 16:12 Uhr +1100 1.2.2009, Christopher Lueg wrote:
"Online search" was never compromised. As you also mentioned, Google is not the only search engine. In fact it's only one among many capable search engines.
QUT's Amanda Spink and collaborators compared major search engines and found very little overlap which means (my interpretation) that focussing too much on Google is not a good idea anyway.
You may also want to check out the recent article on "Objectivity, Reliability, and Validity of Search Engine Count Estimates" by Dietmar Janetzkoo in Vol. 3(1) of the International Journal of Internet Science (http://ijis.net). Cheers --u
participants (6)
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Alex Halavais -
Christopher Lueg -
Malte Ziewitz -
Mathieu O'Neil -
Robert Ackland -
Ulf-Dietrich Reips