Google has shown itself to be the strong, silent type, and quick, too – in about two days’ time, the company cleaned up what one individual called “massive amounts of malware redirects” without bothering to say a word about it.
Results count; whether it’s in spite or because of all those “20 percent time” projects floating around, and the company’s frequently touchy-feely way of handling business matters, Google has been quite clear on this issue. So it’s nice, but not a huge surprise, that Alex Eckelberry was able to announce, “First, we can ring the all-clear bell. Google took action on these domains and you won’t find them anymore in Google.”
Eckelberry is the president and CEO of Sunbelt Software, so you can pretty well believe what he says. It was, for that matter, Eckelberry and his team who first discovered the malware links within some of Google’s top ten results, so they’re very much on top of the development.
“[I]f you use search terms like ‘inurl’ and ‘site’, you won’t see these malware pages in your results,” Eckelberry pointed out earlier this week. “Clever, since that’s one way for malware researchers to find stuff . . . . And, it only cares if you’re coming from Google. . . . Quite interesting.”
Also interesting is the fact that Google hasn’t made reference to this episode in any public space that we can find. Still, if everything’s safe(r) now, a little intentional forgetfulness probably doesn’t matter too much.
