Google Hacked?

by Taylor Flatt on January 31st, 2009 at 11:26 am EDT - 1,557 views

Saturday, all searches on Google resulted in errors saying the site may contain harmful material and that you should pick another website. Webmasters, including ourselves, were going crazy when we noticed this glitch. However, Google has since fixed the “glitch” and is going to be releasing an official statement soon.

There was a fault. We don’t know the nature of it yet. Everything has been solved. We are still making initial enquiries

a Google spokesperson told BBC News. These kinds of “faults” are something that Google isn’t really well known for which has surprised us all. Although they have fixed it, everyone is wanting to know, What happened? Let us hope something worse doesn’t happen if they were truly hacked or if it was just a simple mistake.

Update: Google attributes the fault to human error. The error occured for about 40 minutes when Google accidently flagged all sites as dangerous. Marissa Mayer, VP of search products and user experience had this to say, “What happened” Very simply, human error. We will carefully investigate this incident and put more robust file checks in place to prevent it from happening again”.

Source: BBC
Image courtesy of BBC

China Restricts Internet Further

by Taylor Flatt on January 5th, 2009 at 8:27 pm EDT - 344 views

China, since last month, has gone another step further and has begun accusing sites like Google for displaying morally controversial items such as pornography and vulgar content. China departments claim they alert Google of their overabundant links to said sites, but have reported Google has implemented no countermeasures. China now threatens, “For those Web sites that repeatedly ignore warnings, we will publicize a few, punish a few and even close down a few”.

China is justifying their action by eluding that the populous is calling for action, “The vulgar trend has deeply harmed the mental and physical health of the young generation. Many parents are calling out: ‘Save our children’. They want the government to take drastic action.”

This looks like this trend will only continue on a downward spiral. With BBC being blocked along with NYTimes website, this will only get worse as the censorship issue is clouded by the cry of “help” by the people. Although there are bad things on the internet, it is like life; you cannot censor everything out and expect to live in a clean just world. Censorship is a long debated argument that has been and always will be a central issue. If China persists on their course of cutting the internet down, where will it stop?

Source: FT, UPI
Image courtesy of gallery.hd