CNET News Daily Podcast: Is Google too big for the Web's good?
After a brief weekend glitch, Google's "the Web is malware" episode raises the obvious question of a monoculture in the making and the implications for the Internet. Are the critics getting ahead of themselves?
For about an hour Saturday morning, Google listed every siteon 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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