The warning was first noticed earlier this week. Despite recent claims that it has been fixed, the Google Safe Browsing Site Status tool, part of the company’s recent security transparency report, still shows “google.com” as “partially dangerous” when searching for the domain.
The report goes into detail on what needs to be fixed, claiming “Some pages on this website install malware on visitors’ computers” and “Attackers on this site might try to trick you to download software or steal your information.”
The tool also says that some of the site’s pages redirect visitors to dangerous websites designed to download malware to computers. Infected sites are also linking back to Google.com. Google’s transparency report is currently suggesting the company reads its own “Webmasters help for hacked sites” to improve its security rating.
Rival Bing is rated “Not dangerous” but also receives warnings for redirecting users towards potentially compromised or malicious sites. It isn’t immediately clear what is causing the ratings. The tool appears to be confused by the wealth of content on search engines and the ad networks accompanying them, leading to what are presumably false positives for malware on Google’s own domain.
The warnings essentially advise that Google could host malicious content depending on how you’re using it. While it’s probably safe to assume that searching for news, information, games or music online isn’t going to compromise your computer, using Google to find potentially shadier websites could well lead you straight to malware, provided by Google.
Google indexes almost all of the Internet and at some point it’s inevitable it’ll find malware and fail to filter it out. Its presence on pages makes the safe browsing status tool view it as unsafe as there is a possibility that users could end up being attacked as a consequence of using the site.
Since Google.com includes services such as Google+ and Google Groups, the warnings are likely to be caused by user-generated content on discussion boards and social networks. Google isn’t directly responsible for the malware but it does exist on its networks and could be found by general users.
Google claimed to have fixed its ranking with its Safe Browsing tool yesterday, telling Fortune that the warning should no longer display. As of writing, Google.com is still being displayed as “Partially dangerous” though. Either the issue was never fully resolved or more traces of malware have already returned.
