Dropbox.com blocked by Google?
safebrowsing.clients.google.comThe quickest way to get this resolved is to make it a PR issue for Google.
One suggestion: "It has been widely rumored that Google is developing GDrive, a cloud based file hosting service. Today, Google has blocked Dropbox, a cloud based file hosting service which would compete with GDrive, from appearing in its index. Is it fair that Google can unilaterally cause its competitors to essentially disappear from the Internet, without possibility of appeal, for reasons known only to them?"
Sites are automatically flagged when malware is detected. Dropbox may be serving malware without knowing it. This page has instructions about how to request a malware review: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answe...
Google is well-aware that doing business on an Internet scale means you start clocking measurable economic losses immediately when the site goes down, and for all intents and purposes Google has just handed Dropbox a service interruption because Google far and away the most powerful entity on the Internet. I can't even bring Dropbox up in my browser by typing in their domain name, to say nothing of the majority of Internet users who use Google as their primary means of navigation.
If it were my business that was down, I'd go for the PR route before asking for a review, because you know what? Google sucks at putting a human in the loop. They hate it. It costs money and doesn't scale to the entire Internet.
When I type stuff into forms at Google, I expect to hear back around a week later on those occassions when they actually get back to me, and I pay Google thousands of dollars to provide the service I'm asking about. One would hope I'm getting the good customer experience compared to some anonymous malware distributor saying they've reformed their ways.
(Less you think I'm joking: Google for [reinclusion request] to see what Google's suggested timeline is for reinclusion in their index if you are bounced out for SEO practices they don't approve of. Hint: think months, not minutes.]
In the amusing-to-contemplate-fantasy-world where there was any entity as powerful as Google on the Internet, and that entity blocked access to 60% of Google users for distributing malware (well, it is highly likely that Google is a contributing factor to more malware infections than anyone else on earth -- see "owns navigation on the Internet"), I highly doubt that Larry would ask Sergey to write something into a web form somewhere and then, you know, wait until somebody got around to addressing it.
Looks like they're working with Google to get it resolved: http://twitter.com/Dropbox/status/5610900563
Update: They warnings are gone.
You are reading too much in to it.
I don't think Patrick read into anything there. He does not imply that Google did this intentionally at all.
His point holds water for me, getting blocked by Google is a huge problem for any business, and its impossible to get in touch with Google short of making a fuss.
Consider this tweet from Dropbox:
"Having trouble reaching the right folks @ Google re: browser warnings; email abuse@dropbox.com to help, thanks"
http://twitter.com/Dropbox/status/5612052146
Not to mention, the timing sucks: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=935009 (Google announces today they've increased their storage quota to 20GB/$5, which happens to be very competitive with Dropbox).
Not getting out the tinfoil hat, but this isn't right.
Not really, his point is valid. They wield a terrifying amount of power over most web-based businesses, and they're not very careful with it as they're not beholden to any site. If you get bumped from their index, you can immediately lose a very large percentage of your traffic and have very little hope of regaining it on the MONTHS timeframe. For a startup, that could mean game over.
Google sucks at putting a human in the loop. They hate it. It costs money and doesn't scale to the entire Internet.
Dammit all that free at point of use stuff Google keeps giving us, I want them to have a guy retyping all my emails into Gmail to make it so prohibitively expensive that they have to close all their services?? That'll show 'em.
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Adropbox.com&ie=utf...
shows 71 pages indexed
http://www.google.com/search?q=dropbox.com&ie=utf-8&...
has 1.7 million mentions
It works fine for me...
When you switch domains the history of the new domain is somewhat important and how you go about switching is pretty important too if you want to keep your google traffic.
They appear to have done it right, though: 301 redirecting the old domain to the corresponding URLs on the new domain, which is the SEO best practice that Google tells you to do.
(I know there is a Firefox extension that would let you check this but since I am intensely lazy I opened up a terminal and telneted to www.getdropbox.com on port 80 then typed "GET www.getdropbox.com/" enter, which produced the expected result, a 301 redirect header and some human readable text for idiots like me who test things by telnet.)
What I don't get is what they mean with 'dropbox.com blocked by Google', I can't find any proof of that and the diagnostics page shows some history information which indicates that there is not and has not been a problem.
Does anybody have a screenshot of what it looks like with the 'problem' visible ?
They've only blocked the secure site for that domain name. Might be because the SSL certificate is still for www.getdropbox.com
Since it is effectively a free and anonymous hosting service (files hosted can be shared publicly via HTTP), I can easily imagine it being used for distributing malware.
though couldn't any of the file storage places have the same issue (mosso, s3, etc)?
Because they just switched domains (getdropbox.com to dropbox.com), they haven't built up a positive reputation on their new domain yet. As a result, only a handful of instances of malware being served by a user can get the domain blocked.
I wonder how effective this sort of attack would be against Dropbox in the future.
Valid point and it crossed my mind too, however Google's systems are aware of domain shifts (I assume the Dropbox folks filed a domain change) and it should know about its 'transferred' positive rap.
If the block is solely based on malware distribution then Facebook would have suffered the same fait ages ago.
Amisdst all the data Google stores it should be clear that Dropbox isn't a random site freely dropping malware around the web.
If it can't figure it out then a good old fashioned human should.
I'm pretty sure this is the issue. Google wouldn't know to treat Dropbox "special" just because they switched domains. "dropbox.com" hasn't been around long enough in its current incarnation for it to be "clear that [it] isn't a random site freely dropping malware around the web."
But then what's the point of the change of address tool in Google Webmaster Tools?
Screenshot: http://bit.ly/4xZpA8
Obviously it is for this purpose, but the fact that it exists doesn't mean it was used properly in this case or that their change notice was updated in a timely fashion.
though couldn't any of the file storage places have the same issue (mosso, s3, etc)?
They aren't free and anonymous, are they? The free and anonymous part tends to be important to malware distributors. Exploiting existing servers is one way, but free sites are also used quite heavily.
its fake.. Check this out http://safebrowsing.clients.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnost...
I don't understand how they can block a site this big and this heavily trafficked without even making an attempt to contact anyone.
Automation. They accidentally flagged the entire internet a while ago.