Marissa Mayer Says Sorry On Google's "This Site May Harm You" Issue

Marissa Mayer, Googles, cute(plus hot) but smart VP, Search products and user experience said sorry in a blogpost titled "This site may harm your computer on every search result?!?!"

I am assuming the questions marks and exclaimation marks in the end stress the significance of the issue.

She did give a half baked explaination that would almost make your believe it came from paris hilton or something and here is the explaination:

she says "We periodically update that list and released one such update to the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here's the human error), the URL of '/' was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and '/' expands to all URLs"

Hmm the url of "/". I wonder if there is a way of explaining this problem in a better way. VP of shit sucks and what not. Get Paris hilton in, she would do as good i'm guessing.

But honestly who cares, the female is hot, when she says sorry you smile and move on.

I'm only wondering how many times did the adword revenues went up during these 40 minutes.

Update: Google blog stops showing trackbacks on their blogpost. And also somehow promotes its own blog post with clarification on top of their search engine for related terms("this site may harm your computer), coincidence? I have never seen Google work that fast for sure. And not showing blogs that link to their blogspot is again somewhat grey. 

Government of India Plans $10 PC

I recently read a news in Indian Express a national daily. According to the news government of India in association with IIT Madras and IISc Bangalore plans to laundh a $10 PC for students.

They also plan to provide free e-content that students can download and use.

Just below the news someone comments saying something that seems too good to be true, probably is.

Lets face it, IISc is not going to make chips, they are going to use off the shelves chips available. They are not going to build motherboards they will borrow a twaiwan made motherboard.

The cost of a TFT display will be more than $10.

India has always been fascinated by quantity. China is not different.

Only problem is when it comes to education, quality is what we need, not quantity.

I only wish they would have provided somethiing actually useful even if it costed little more, they would exempt broadband services from taxes for next 10 years and let broadband penetration increase in India.

This is whn you start to doubt their vision. I just hope this does not end up being some policitians cheap shortcut to fame.

I'll keep an eye on this one. 

When Google Gets Fucked: All Sites On The Web May Harm Your Computer

Just about 15 or so minutes(8.30 PM IST) i noticed that whatever you search for, below every search result Google shows a "This Site May Harm Your Computer" warning.

First i thought its only my pc, but then when i checked with some other people the problem was faced with pretty much everyone.

It seems Google has some internal bug, or the server that checks if a site is harmful is screwed up.

Ths funny part is this is the first time i have seen a major issue with Google. Its ok for tech savvy users who understand its just a minor problem with google and that is why its giving this warning message by error, but less tech savvy users would probably think that there is something wrong with the website they were going to visit.

Funnier still is the fact that if you click on result you are taken on a warning page which asks you to either return back to Google or copy paste the link of the website, which is eomthing not many people would do.

The effect of this would be that people will click on ads on the right side more, which amazingly does not wanr users if a advertisers site cna harm your computer. 

I wldnt be surprised if Google click through rates and their revenue jumps by 20-40% till this issue is fixed.

I am curious as to what happened.

Update: Things seem to be fixed now, I am just wondering if someone uploded the wrong file at the wrong place(overwriting shit), makes you realise at the end of the day google is a website too, they fuck up too, so much for 25,000 employees.

 

In.com sends users a black mail email..

Greetings from IN.com Mail!

We'd like to thank you for having tried your cool, short IN.com email address. 

You've not logged into your account for the last three months, and as part of our "use it or lose it" policy, if you don't login to your account within the next week days, we'll need to delete your email address. 

Once we delete your email address, you will lose all data in your email account, and the address will be available for anybody else to register and start using as soon as it has been deleted.

If you like IN.com mail, and would want to continue using your account; we would request you to login to your email account now, else your account will be deleted by 5th Feb, 2009.

Sign in to IN.com Mail Now!

We've sent this message both to your IN.com account, and your alternate ID. 

Hope you will continue enjoying your IN.com Email Address,

Cheers,
IN.com Mail Team



I remember Hotmail trying this arm twisting by deactivating user emails, but deleting account is something new.

The only problem with this approach is you are showing your customers "we dont care that much" 

And a customer who is registered by not using your service means, he was interested in your service at some point but found a better alternative. 

Deleting such mails sounds like axing your own foot, because if a user is signed up even if he is not using your service, you can reach out to him anytime as you better your service, this atleast gives you a hope that this user will return and start using our service.

By deleting a user account, you only blow the investment you made in getting a user to your site in the first place.

I knw it sucks when users sign up but dont use a service, but this one is a bad strategy network18.