How Much Did Google Error Fiasco Cost To Advertisers?

It was just last month when google defeated yahoo to become the most visited page on internet and here comes something which made people frighten and helpless to use the internet without google for even 40 minutes.

All google users were taken aback last night when they experienced errors in google results where every search result was flagged as “This site may harm your computer” – the tag line reserved for sites believed to contain malware.

The time of occurence was :6:30 a.m. PST and 7:25 a.m

This resulted in huge hue and cry from blogging community and so called micro-bloggers.

what really happened-google’s explanation?

In their own words:-

“What happened? Very simply, human error. Google flags search results with the message “This site may harm your computer” if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously. We do this to protect our users against visiting sites that could harm their computers. We maintain a list of such sites through both manual and automated methods.

We periodically update that list and released one such update to the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here’s the human error), the URL of ‘/’ was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and ‘/’ expands to all URLs.”

How did this cost advertisers?

All google search results were pointing to loop pages whereas advertisement clicks were working fine so to sum it up almost millions of google users were impatiently clicking on google ads just to check whether there pc was under virus attack or most importantly to witness the moment if google was hacked. This clicking of ads was almost meaningless because users must have hit back button to again see if the problem vanishes and this must have depleted a lot of credits from advertisers budget.

many publishers were also affected due to their dependency on the google search queries.

The money in question is huge because google was down for 40 minutes across the world not just a single country.

It needs to be seen whether google provides any compensation to the advertisers for clicks occuring on those 40 mins.
Lessons to be learned?

This is not a first time where a single error costed pain and monetary losses to users-dreamhost finger mismatch costed 7.5 million dollars which was refunded back.

Big corporations should learn lessons from the bloggers who proof read their articles several time even though they dont have so much on stake as google or for that matter other companies have on their actions,so they atleast double check their actions.

Windows 7 out in 2009 : Microsoft

According to a blog post on the Microsoft Sweden partner blog, Windows 7 should be ready by Q3 2009, with an RC coming in three months.

On the Engineering Windows 7 blog this week, Microsoft again noted that it was planning to give the public a Release Candidate of Windows 7 before the final version is ready. In other words, there is not going to be a “Beta 2,” and the public would only see one public beta build: Windows 7 build 7000. However, a timeline for these versions is not disclosed: “This post is in no way an announcement of a ship date, change in plans, or change in our previously described process, but rather it provides additional detail and a forward looking view of the path to RTM and General Availability.”
The fact that Microsoft is not planning a second beta, that the first beta is the most stable Microsoft has ever given out, and that getting Windows 7 ready in time for the holidays is advantageous has all led to speculation that Microsoft wants Vista’s successor out this year. Officially, Microsoft has always said “three years after the general availability of Windows Vista,” which was released on January 30, 2007, and that the release date was also dependent on quality. As with any product in beta, enthusiasts have been making predictions all over the place, most in the timeframe of late 2009 to early 2010. Microsoft employees have been making their own predictions, but the average of their guesses is much earlier in 2009, October 3.

Google: Every site on the Web is harmful

Did you try to get from Point A to Point B on the Web via everyone’s favorite search engine this morning? How’d that work out for you?

For about 30 minutes this morning, starting shortly before 9 a.m., all search results in Google were marked as harmful. Each result included the line, “This site may harm your computer.”

What’s worse, when you tried to click on a link, you were blocked from actually going to the site.

The only way to continue to the site was to manually copy the URL from the text and paste it into the browser.

That basically rendered Google unusable. I think this was a good morning for Yahoo and Windows Live Search.

It appears to be fixed now. It was obviously some kind of glitch, but it was a nasty one.

Update: Matt Cutts, who heads up Google’s webspam team, says via Twitter the problem was indeed on Google’s end, and that a blog post about it is forthcoming. I suspect it will appear in Google’s main blog.

Update 2.0: Google has posted an explanation on its blog.

What happened? Very simply, human error. Google flags search results with the message “This site may harm your computer” if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously. We do this to protect our users against visiting sites that could harm their computers. We work with a non-profit called StopBadware.org to get our list of URLs. StopBadware carefully researches each consumer complaint to decide fairly whether that URL belongs on the list. Since each case needs to be individually researched, this list is maintained by humans, not algorithms.

We periodically receive updates to that list and received one such update to release on the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here’s the human error), the URL of ‘/’ was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and ‘/’ expands to all URLs. Fortunately, our on-call site reliability team found the problem quickly and reverted the file. Since we push these updates in a staggered and rolling fashion, the errors began appearing between 6:27 a.m. and 6:40 a.m. and began disappearing between 7:10 and 7:25 a.m., so the duration of the problem for any particular user was approximately 40 minutes.

Browser Wars: Chrome vs Internet Explorer vs Mozilla Firefox

How much thought do you put into your browser? For many, the answer is probably “not much.” For years, I lived with Internet Explorer (IE)—thinking it was the sole survivor after Netscape faded into oblivion. Some of you have probably had your internet service upped to get better speeds. Maybe you switched from DSL to cable or vice-versa. Maybe Fios was your answer. While those are important factors, it just might be your browser slowing you down. Let me say this — if you’re still using Internet Explorer, you’re wasting your time.

It’s less than a year since I first discovered that there was life beyond the painfully slow, close-then-reopen, hanging-up ways of Internet Explorer. I was freed first by Safari. Wow, who knew browsing could be fun again? No hanging up, speeds that began to live up to the promise of the internet. Sure, some websites will not open in Safari—but that’s OK, I’ll use IE in those few situations. Then a few months ago, I tried Firefox. You have to love a program that looks for your cookies and bookmarks and installs them (if you want) when you install the program. Wow, and what are these add-ons? I can do more than surf the internet, I can interact with other programs on my computer—launched from the speedy confines of my browser? This is exciting, and practical. Downloading is clean and easy to use. For the last 3 months, I’m happy—I’m opening multiple tabs, speeding along, cringing every time I have to open IE for that ONE program that only uses IE. I detest having to open that program on these occasions. The IE symbol gives me the chills, makes me angry, and symbolizes the useless stagnation of this critical software. Once finished with this temporary regress, I return to Firefox…now even better in 3.0. Its open-sourceness dominates my desktop real estate. All is well.

Then, last week, enter Chrome, Google’s foray into the browser war. I’m a fan of trying anything from Google—though they’re not all winners(love Gmail, don’t love Google desktop). Could this be better than Firefox? I had to try. Speed–It seemed slower than Firefox at first, slightly, and now seems faster, slightly. Design is not radically different, but does offer a spacious window with less clutter. I like this. It has a “paste and search” option off right click—nifty, saves me at least 30 nanoseconds per use. Sorry mac users, not available for you just yet. I’m not sure which I’ll end up using—but the choice for me is between the new top two: Firefox or Chrome. Open source appeals to me in the same way a mom and pop bookshop does. But Google is a bit like bog box stores—hate their methods, love their prices. Ultimately the fastest browser with the most options will win my vote. For now, I say, try them all.

Google Fires Up Ten Candles and Gets Nostalgic (and Even More Ambitious)

If Google’s logo today is any indication, those birthday celebrations had by the blog world earlier this month (as well as the confusion had the year before) may have been a tad premature.

Or maybe the guys in Mountain View, namely Sergey and Larry, simply thought they’d bring out the pomp and the circumstance somewhat belatedly to cap the last 30 days with its own grand look back in Google time. Whatever the case, the party hats are now officially out. The cake’s been lit, a small stack of servers have been wrapped in homage, and hey, the exclamation point is back.

This has been a busy September for the company. It has put forth a Web browser that pundits have spent weeks looking up and down and all around. It has sparred with ideas that its so-called non-exclusive deal with Yahoo would wreak havoc on the semi-competitive nature of the current online search advertising environment. Along with T-Mobile it has officially taken the cover off the first Android-based smartphone to come to market in the US. And there are several million other pieces of miscellany for the press to continuously pore over. And Google of course still has quite a way to go before it gets that “all the world’s knowledge” thing down pat.

In addition to the festive front page greeting it’s presented visitors with today, the company has produced a timeline of what has been done under its purview over the last decade. In a word, it’s comprehensive.

It’s also promoting Project 10^100 some more. In short, the project is, in some manner of speaking, intended to change the world. The details are quite basic. Anyone may submit their world-changing idea by October 20th, from which 100 will be published by the company early next year. At that point the public will again be involved with a voting drive to determine 20 semifinalists, from which an “advisory board” will select 5 finalists. Those still standing will be channeled into projects to which the company will devote $10 million. Things social, environmental, economical, and educational are all being sought.

Why I never trust new browsers — Chrome included ?

Google released its new, open source, browser, called Chrome, a few days ago. You can download it from Google’s home page. It’s a pretty, clean, fast browser. [As a Microsoft employee], I welcome the competition. Competition is always good and improves everyone’s product.

As a security guy, I wondered how well Chrome would prevail against malicious misuse. One of Chrome’s benefits is that it is relatively smaller, code-wise, than its nearest competitors (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and so on). Less code could mean less potential exploit vectors and bugs. It will be a year or so before we can see how well it fares overall, but it isn’t off to a stellar start.

There were at least three announced Chrome exploits in the first two days. The first exploit showed that Chrome could be tricked into silently downloading executables to local user locations. After this exploit was announced came the expected rash of novice defenses stating that just because something is downloaded to a user’s desktop doesn’t mean it is executed, and therefore the user is safe. Yeah, right. Apparently you’re new to computing and haven’t learned that stage one of the exploit (the hardest part) is always followed by stage two, where someone else teaches us how to silently execute that code.

The other shoe that dropped was an exploit discovered by security researcher Aviv Raff. This exploit tricks Chrome into downloading multiple files (“carpet bombing”) the user’s desktop and automatically launches a JAR (Java Archive) file. Raff claims this is possible because Chrome is running an unpatched version of a browser component called WebKit, taken from Apple’s Safari.

You can see a harmless demo of Raff’s exploit online. It requires two mouse clicks to kick off, but those sorts of things are pretty easy to do using basic social engineering. Apple patched the WebKit exploit in July of this year, by which time it was already two months old.

A slightly less important DoS attack was announced by Rishi Narang. The proof-of-concept code will crash the entire Chrome browser, all tabs, which is not supposed to happen. According to Google’s Chrome security summary, “each tab [is] in an isolated ‘sandbox’… to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites.”

What will another few days bring, when the fuzz testers and Mountain Dew-energized hackers are finished with their analysis?

This is not to pick on Google. Chrome is an interesting browser and making a secure Internet browser is a tough thing to do. Just ask the other major competitors. Having a popular Internet browser means wearing a virtual “kick me” (or, really, “hack me”) sign all day long. And the more secure you claim to be, the harder hackers will try to exploit you.

I gave up on perfectly secured browsers after Lynx was hacked a few times. Lynx is an open source, minimalist browser that can do little beyond displaying text. And if hackers can hack that browser, any other browser is going to get exploited. Just to pile on, 20 plus years ago, hackers were able to malform ASCII text files that could manipulate your keyboard and reformat your hard drive after simply viewing the text file. There were called Ansibombs.

If hackers can exploit text files, it is highly likely that they can hack anything more sophisticated. And that is why I never trust new browsers that say they are the “more secure alternative.”