Is Google really invincible?
Is Google really invincible?
New Delhi: It’s the question that was on many people’s minds when earlier this fortnight a minor boo boo hit the eponymous search engine.
What if Google gets hacked?
Last fortnight internet surfers using Google.com for searching might have noticed a peculiar bug. Google had marked every search result as potentially harmful and capable of harming your computer.
Google took time to respond to the crisis and after several updates made it clear that the whole fiasco was because of human error. No need to mention that in this economy nobody wants to be THAT human.
It appears that someone added the forward slash to the list of bad URLs. The forward slash of course is part of most URLs. So the search engine dutifully blacklisted most of the Internet.
Things have now gone back to normal and Google Search is working fine again.
But there are two lasting negative impressions after the crisis:
1.Google is not infallible. We may like to think they are. They may like to think they are. But they are not. Google can make mistakes and big ones at that. So if you, like many many people on the web, are hugely dependant on Google services then the fiasco could make you think twice. I am a fanboy of the big G, no doubt, but if they can’t keep their search engines tamper proof…then it makes me wonder how prone the rest of Google is to human errors of this kind.
2.Secondly most people are upset at the pace at which Google responded to the crisis. Google is not associated with that sort of callousness.
What Google needs to remember is this: screwing up big time and NOT owning up to it honestly and quickly reminds of this big software company from Redmond. Google needs to better than that.
And finally Google Latitude!
Everyone’s talking about it… yes even my editor… but nobody really knows why. Privacy advocates hate it and anyone with GPS in their mobile phones are overjoyed. They finally have a reason to justify the thing in the first place.
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