On 31 January 2009, a Google employee more less shut down Google’s search engines when he left one forward slash – the / symbol – in a text file listing of web sites suspected of hosting malware.
When that text file was uploaded into Google’s search system, all heck broke lose. The forward slash is used as a short cut or wildcard to exclude an entire folder or site from Google searches.
The file was obtained from StopBadware.org, an organization that collects information about web sites and malware. Google uses one of this group’s list to flag search results that may lead to malware.
When the wildcard was used by itself, on a single line of the file, Google’s search engine interpreted that as an entry for EVERY web site on the public Internet.
So for about 40 minutes, every Google search result was flagged with the message “This site may harm your computer” – even if that web site was safe to use.
There’s a few more details in this Google blog article called “This site may harm your computer” on every search result?!?!
Image provided by lampbane on flickr through a Creative Commons license.
