Source: Xinhua

02-03-2009 08:35

BEIJING, Feb. 2 (Xinhuanet) -- Google webpage search engine was hit by technical problems with all its search results showing the warning: "This site may harm your computer" for almost an hour and users who chose to ignore the alert were unable to open the destination webpage.

Google webpage search engine was hit by technical problems with all its search results showing the warning: "This site may harm your computer" for  almost an hour and users who chose to ignore the  alert were unable to open the destination webpage. (Xinhuanet Photo)

The affect of the glitch was not only limited to the U.S. on Saturday as users across the world complained for the breakdown.

The Guardian, a UK newspaper, commented that "Google placed the entire Internet on a blacklist today."

Experts predict that the error led to losses in Google's advertising revenue of 2 to 3 million dollars, but the harm to its reliability far exceeds the loss in revenue.

The cockup prompted its Vice President of Search Products & User Experience (essentially one of the highest ranked brass in the company) Marissa Mayer to post a note on the website's official blog to explain in details why this has happened.

The root of the issue came from the fact that the URL of '/' was mistakenly checked in as a value to a file that a regularly updated list of harmful websites and '/' expanded to all URLs. Google's team identified the problem within a few minutes but because of the scale of the roll out, the problem lasted 40 minutes before it was rooted out.

Mayer reported that the problem has been fully solved and promised that Google "will carefully investigate this incident and put more robust file checks in place to prevent it from happening again."

Editor:Yang Jie