The Google, “human error”-caused glitch which practically broke the Internet for about an hour on Saturday raised two important questions:

Q1: Is there a higher instance to turn to if Google tags yours Web site as containing malware (and it labels it with the “This site may harm your computer”), or is Google a sort of a dictator on this matter?

Q2: Did Google’s dedicated users considered some alternative search engines when the glitch hit them and if so, are there more viable alternatives?

A1: Yes there is a higher body to turn to – StopBadware.org.

The organization acts like a sort of an appeals body for those Web sites owners who argue that their sites do not contain malware and they were wrongly tagged by Google. A five-person office on the Harvard campus in Cambridge, Mass., reviews the requests and it gets from 1,000 to 3,000 per month.

StopBadware.org was hit with a massive traffic shortly after the Google error which labeled more than 170,000 Web sites as containing malware. The site’s traffic rose 13 times to 67,000 that day which caused it to go offline for about an hour and a half.

A2: Google won’t easily forget this error and what it caused. It made all Google search users step back for a few moments and take a look at the bigger picture. And of course most users thought about alternatives, but there really aren’t any fail-safe systems out there to turn to. Google still is the best alternative.

"This is a little embarrassing. It's hard to believe that there are no fail-safe systems in place," said John Byrne, a senior analyst at Technology Business Research Inc. in Hampton, N.H.