Saturday, January 31, 2009

Google Paranoia? "This Site May Harm Your Computer" Everywhere

This post is meant to be a message for any Google staff who happen to be trolling for reaction to this morning's overabundance of security. For anyone else who happens on this page, welcome and please join me in taunting Google for their Internet faux pas.
Google I say to you "HA! HA!"
I don't know a damn thing about computer coding or Internet security protocols. I have no idea what lead you to produce such an extreme over-reaction to Internet in general. Most of my theories would be rubbish anyways. I would guess that someone would have put Internet on Orange Alert and you just got carried away. Maybe you had just broken up with someone and were scared to get hurt again. I might even believe that you had a wild Friday night, and the fear was just a side effect of coming down. Like I said, none of those actually makes sense, so I will leave the theorizing to the many other blogs that have already posted about this. Eve
I can say that moments like this are the last thing you can afford. You are the hegemon of Internet search engines, and in a troubled global economy you need all the advantages you can get. Even if the problem is fixed by the time I finish typing this post (which it probably will be), I can still say that the few minutes of distrust you inspired in your users this moment certainly caused a few more people to turn to Yahoo! or Ask. Maybe some of them will decide they even prefer those search engines. I am certain some of the 24-hour news echo chamber will chat about your embarrasment and hurt your corporate profile with the public. Eventually you will find that when you are playing king of the hill any mistake while on top will be used by your competitors as a chance to knock you from your perch. No, I don't think this morning will be the moment that causes Google to loose its grip on Internet dominance. I just wanted to point out that it could be the start of a long slide down. Ironically, because Google was fearful of everything for just a moment, now they have cause to be fearful for a long time to come.
Just to reiterate: "HA! HA!"