Google search service goes for a toss

California, February 1: Internet search engine giant Google’s services were disrupted for about 55 minutes Saturday morning causing a lot of inconvenience to users across the globe. The web links did not function and the search results contained fake safety warnings.

The company has taken note of the fact that all searches resulted in links carrying the same warning which said, “This site may harm your computer.” On clicking any of the links, an error message affirming that the requested page could not be reached was displayed.

In its blog, Google said, “What happened? Very simply, human error.”

In its explanation for the disruption of services, Google has said that it regularly upgrades the list of sites it perceives of containing software that could pose risk for computers. On Saturday, a company employee wrongly typed the Web address of one such site. As a result, all sites were flagged as harmful.

As per Google’s estimates, majority of the users would have been affected for just 40 minutes depending on the time at which their computers registered the error.

There were some apprehensions when Google appeared to imply that StopBadware.org, the firm that assists it in determining unsafe sites, was partly responsible for the malfunction.

But later Google released a statement wherein it took upon itself the entire responsibility for the glitch and apologized to the users.

Gabriel Stricker, a company spokesman, was quoted as saying, “We have a good ongoing relationship with StopBadware.org. In our post, we tried to clarify our role in this error.”

He further said, “Our Web search is extremely reliable, and that’s why when an interruption occurs, even if it’s for a matter of minutes, for a Saturday morning, people notice it.”

Last month too there was some software problem with Google Maps as reported by The Staten Island Advance. Due to this error, drivers had a lot of difficulty in trying to reach various points within Staten Island on a 176-mile detour to Schenectady.