As I often do on a weekend morning, shortly after waking up this morning, I grabbed my iPhone from the bedside table, gave it a pipe to the world (i.e. took it out of ‘airplane mode’) and began to cast my eye over my Twitter stream.

It wasn’t long before I came across multiple tweets that mentioned issues with Google’s flagship web search.  For a period of slightly less than one hour, every search result was tagged with “This site may harm your computer”.  I’ve seen the occasional search result with this under it before, but word is that every single result from every single search in that period was being marked thus.

So, a bit of a stuff up on Google’s part, right?  Yep.  Turns out it was simple human error.  Now don’t get me wrong, the error was pretty silly on someone’s part.  Quite why you’d put “/” in as a dodgy web address is beyond me, but hey, sometimes these things happen.  Maybe someone was trying to delete a line and missed one stray, but important, character.

So why am I writing this post?  Well I am writing it because I was stunned at some of the responses to the problem I was seeing on Twitter.

» Anyone else seeing “This site may harm your computer” on EVERY site in search results when googling something?

» Something seriously wrong with Google – http://tinyurl.com/cdld36

» Live on Ustream now regarding the Google breakdown: http://tinyurl.com/cdld36

» Google explains it was human error – http://tinyurl.com/cdld36

- Cali Lewis

» Something is seriously wrong with Google.

» I guess I know what the number one topic will be on the radio show today.

» This is the equivalent of an Internet blackout. I never asked Google to “protect me.” I bet Carol Bartz did this.

» TechCrunch broke the Google story first: http://bit.ly/igUF Note to self: This is why it pays to have a Belgium bureau.

» OK true. Twitter broke the Google story first – as with pretty everything. Twitter is the new place to go when you need to know.

- Leo Laporte

My goodness!  I’ve worked in IT for over 20 years and something as simple as the issue that afflicted Google does not warrant the amount of attention shown by Cali, nor the vitriol given by Leo.  Leo, you sure didn’t ask Google to protect you, but neither did they ask you to use their search engine!  This is exactly the same as complaining about the police shooting the wrong person.  Maybe they should just go away and you can protect yourself.

I consume significant amounts of content from both of these people, and that won’t change.  But I must say I now have a lesser opinion of both of them.  It seems that Google can do no right these days.  It’s called “tall poppy syndrome“.