Google Flags Whole Internet As Malware
We’re not quite sure what’s going on, but a couple of minutes ago any search result from Google started being flagged as malware with a message stating “This site may harm your computer”. Including Google’s own website as you can see above.
Twitter is abuzz with people reporting the massive error (also look for tags #googmayharm or #googmayhem), and it’s clear that this is happening around the world. Apparently, it’s happening with any browser on any platform too.
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 it’s 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. I’m 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 you’re searching as a signed-in user now.
Update 2: it seems to be fine now. Lasted about 15 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. It’s 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, I’d wager).
