google search malware warning update

i wrote before about google's efforts to warn users of their search engine when visiting known bad sites and i had a number of concerns about how it had been implemented...

it appears that somewhere along the line ALL of those concerns were addressed... as you can see below, not only was a backlink added so that users could back out of going to the bad site but the mal-link itself has become non-clickable (a user would have to copy-n-paste the url into a browser window in order to continue to the bad site)... as such they've now made the safest option the easiest option...


but wait, that's not all... they've also gone and marked up the results page itself so you know right from the results page if a particular link is bad or not...


did my previous post on this have anything to do with getting these changes made? probably not, but that's not what's important... what's important is that the changes were made and the feature is a lot safer (and more convenient) because of it...

google search malware warning

a while ago (2 months?) google added a malware warning feature to their search engine that utilizes the stopbadware.org project and looks a little like this


i only saw it first hand for the first time today (despite being an avid google user) and i already have concerns...

the first is that you don't see the warning until you click on the result from their results page... why not save the user some hassle and just mark up the results page like siteadvisor does? i mean, really, it shouldn't be that hard (it might make siteadvisor redundant, however)...

the second is worse, however... of the options it gives the user for continuing from the warning page, the easiest one for the user to choose is to go on to the bad site... this is backwards - if google really wants to help people they should make the safest option the easiest one to choose - that means it needs a backlink, a box to enter a new query, and something that makes it more difficult to click on the mal-link like a checkbox that says "i understand that the site contains badware and want to visit it anyways" that must be checked before the mal-link can be click on...

come on, folks... this is basic secure UI design, surely all those big brains in the googleplex understand such a basic principle as making the right choice the easiest choice...