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You're viewing this a binary outcome of "will delisting block all malware results". Of course it won't, and it doesn't have to. This fight is never ending, and

You're viewing this a binary outcome of "will delisting block all malware results". Of course it won't, and it doesn't have to. This fight is never ending, and we need small victories. Google doesn't need to be a customer service company to do this. In fact, the opposite, they need to be a search engine company. Some domain names, IPs and site content have associations with software products, but at present Google only extends the protection of being an authoritative source to some products. Google also own Virus Total, they know which files are malware. So they can know which sites are full of malware, they just don't alter the search rankings to reflect that. As to legalities, VLC playing whack a mole in the US courts is expensive and pointless, the time scale is so long they would easily switch to the backup domain. But that doesn't work with crawling -- to appear in a result you need to be indexed.

_8j50 4y ago
You have good points but you are missing mine: Google doesn't owe anyone the service of removing malicious results. If it is in their own best interest to do so, that is their business. You can't demand they remove this content, the only people who can are their actual customers of google search: advertisers! The people responsible for the malware removal have abuse contacts and if they don't you kinda have to follow SOP with legal and law enforcement avenues. Just how it works. Even the FBI let's you report internet crime, you can scream at google but law enforcement and webhosts/ISPs(transit providers) are more likely to respond and do something. Vlc doesn't have a fat wallet so your point about the cours is true, but if a lawyer will do pro-bono for them, it's an easy open-and-shut case. Yes, google owns VT but you won't even see long standing malicious site verdicts in VT make it to safebrowsing, if they won't even do that, do you think people screaming on twitter is something they listen to? I hope so, but unlikely and a waste of time other than for rage scrollers.
- angry_octet 4y ago
  I think google is suffering big company problems. I think a lot of googlers want to penalise malicious sites but it's a second tier goal for the search team, who are getting hammered constantly by other players trying to alter rankings. Obviously a few open source projects complaining won't move the needle much, but law enforcement and cyber agencies do have big requirements for improving resilience to these attacks (and supply chain especially). Improving the consumer supply chain security is a big government goal in many countries.

_8j50 4y ago

You have good points but you are missing mine: Google doesn't owe anyone the service of removing malicious results. If it is in their own best interest to do so, that is their business. You can't demand they remove this content, the only people who can are their actual customers of google search: advertisers! The people responsible for the malware removal have abuse contacts and if they don't you kinda have to follow SOP with legal and law enforcement avenues. Just how it works. Even the FBI let's you report internet crime, you can scream at google but law enforcement and webhosts/ISPs(transit providers) are more likely to respond and do something. Vlc doesn't have a fat wallet so your point about the cours is true, but if a lawyer will do pro-bono for them, it's an easy open-and-shut case. Yes, google owns VT but you won't even see long standing malicious site verdicts in VT make it to safebrowsing, if they won't even do that, do you think people screaming on twitter is something they listen to? I hope so, but unlikely and a waste of time other than for rage scrollers.

angry_octet 4y ago
I think google is suffering big company problems. I think a lot of googlers want to penalise malicious sites but it's a second tier goal for the search team, who are getting hammered constantly by other players trying to alter rankings. Obviously a few open source projects complaining won't move the needle much, but law enforcement and cyber agencies do have big requirements for improving resilience to these attacks (and supply chain especially). Improving the consumer supply chain security is a big government goal in many countries.