CNET News Daily Podcast: Is Google too big for the Web's good?

For about an hour Saturday morning, Google listed every site on the Internet as potentially harmful to your computer. At first, Google blamed the problem on StopBadware.org but later had to eat crow. Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products and user experience, attributed the problem to "human error" and to a URL list provided by StopBadware.org. But about 30 minutes later, a blog posting on StopBadware.org disputed her explanation. An hour after that, Mayer posted Google's mea culpa. All of which raises the question of what some now describe as the "Google monoculture" and what that suggests for the Internet. ZDNet's editor-in-chief, Larry Dignan, weighs into that debate.

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[drhowarddrfine]

Talk about sensationalist journalism. One slip of the pinky finger and you're ready to slit Google's throat. I find more typos in CNET articles. Get a real job, will ya.

[shootthecops]

if you're going to be discussing google being dangerous, i suggest you discuss something like youtube users being silenced over talking religion and politics, data retention and favors for communo-fascist goverments.

[Geminate]

Does anyone actually 'need' Google? I find Google's problems only to be problems for Google addicts. If you don't like Google, simply don't use it.

[Art Dir]

There are exactly the same number of letters in "Google" as there are in "Skynet."

Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not. Just keep a look out for killer, naked, cyborgs popping out of glowing electric spheres in back allies.

"Look, 850 series Model 101?er, uh, I mean Daddy! Teacher says that every time a google search is executed, a cyborg gets it's plasma orb," said little Zuzu Model TX 2.0.

[travisc94]

Seriously who cares.... Google made an error temporarily (an hour or so) and people go crazy.

Definitely a great search engine, best -- just a simple error though, not something to make a big deal about.

Haha nothing is wrong now, people make mistakes.. thats life

[johnfranks1234]

Most companies enjoy ?security? insofar as they haven?t been targeted yet, or suffered a human error resulting in a catastrophic exposure ? something Google found out the hard way. While various systems of security are important, no system can overcome laxity, ignorance, or deliberate intent to harm. Necessary is a sustained culture and awareness; an efficient prism through which every activity is viewed from a security perspective prior to action.
Price Waterhouse Cooper and Carnegie-Mellon?s CyLab have recent surveys that show the senior executive class to be, basically, clueless regarding IT risk and its tie to overall enterprise (business) risk. Data breaches and accidents are due to a lagging business culture ? absent a new eCulture, breaches and accidents will - and continue to - increase. Here, Google was fortunate, and hopefully its #1 asset, its reputation, will remain intact, but where I am CIO we cannot take chances. Check your local library: A book that is required reading is "I.T. WARS: Managing the Business-Technology Weave in the New Millennium." It also helps outside agencies understand your values and practices.
The author, David Scott, has an interview that is a great exposure: www.businessforum.com/DScott_02.html -
The book came to us as a tip from an intern who attended a course at University of Wisconsin, where the book is an MBA text. In the realm of risk, unmanaged possibilities become probabilities ?Read the book BEFORE you suffer a bad outcome or, worse, propagate one.

[rcardona2k]

Google is too big for its britches in certain areas but there are currently choices. Try exercising them, except for Adwords for that there's adblocking.

[e.avilev]

Great Podcast. If you took out the "ya know"s from Dignan's part, it would have been 1/2 the time and 1/100th of the irritation. I expect better. Go count 'em. I expect better, ya know?

[robertmacewan]

Results page: http://flickr.com/photos/macewan/3240678407/ and click through page: http://flickr.com/photos/macewan/3241500526/