Millions hit by Google 'breakdown'

An apparent system error left millions of visitors to the site puzzled when links to all search results were flagged with the warning ‘This site may harm your computer’.

It is thought the site had erroneously identified all other websites – and some of its own pages – as containing malicious software or ‘malware’.

The glitch, which prevented internet users from directly clicking through to search results, was fixed within 30 minutes although users of Google’s email service Gmail have since reported finding genuine messages sent mistakenly to spam folders.

The errors prompted panic among web surfers who at first feared the popular search engine had suffered some kind of major failure that could have had serious implications for internet commerce.

I wasn’t active on the net when this occurred but had a number of friends who were. They sent me some very worried messages and now I understand better why they did. Read it all–KSH.