You may have heard about the snafu at Google on Saturday morning when all items showing up on Google search were listed as potentially harmful sites. It was, literally, a small error - a slash was added to a file by mistake. News about the glitch spread fast and it showed up on my Twitter within minutes and the rumors where flying during the 40 minute malfunction.
Obviously, Google needs to modify that procedure and add a review and maybe use technology to analyze how the new paths impact the search results. Hopefully, some changes have already been made. The incident illustrates, however, how incredibly dependent we are on this one company. I must confess - I am an avid consumer of Google's services but this dependence is not good.
Unfortunately, it will probably be a long time before any company can seriously challenge Google. Microsoft will not succeed - they have proven to be ineffective in the web space. Yahoo is sinking. Microsoft will get it for a better price now but it's still a sinking ship.
