Millions hit by Google 'breakdown'

Google users around the world have been hit by a malfunction that incorrectly reports every other website as potentially harmful.
By Alastair Jamieson
31 Jan 2009

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. the rest

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Google users get bogus warning on site searches