We've all done stupid things with computers at work. For most of us, this means facing the wrath of the passive-aggressive IT guy. But there are certain jobs where making the same mistakes can cost companies billions of dollars, and sometimes costs people their lives. For instance ...

5 Google Accidentally Blocks the Internet

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

The Tiny Mistake:

Typos are a fact of life for anyone who spends time at a keyboard. Overlooking typos is part of what it means to exist on the Internet -- the millions of words being published at any given moment are just too hard to police. Of course, people who didn't discover boobs or drugs before senior English class will always spot them and point them out, but the rest of us will be fine to just catch the author's drift.

Getty

"Teh? TEH?! You might as well just rape the queen herself."

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

The Fallout:

Google is the only reason the Internet can be as big and fast as it is and still useable. You rely on Google to find the typo-ridden pages that you were looking for when you entered your typo-ridden search term. They're also trusted to avoid pages that will melt your hard drive to your motherboard with viruses. Being the bouncer at the door of the Internet requires Google to update their list of potentially malicious sites constantly and in real time. Getting added to that list is the closest the Internet has to a death sentence. Flagged sites either won't appear in search results or will appear with a warning message. Even if you ignore that message, you will be taken to a page that tells you to go back to from whence you came.

The Register

"My God, the dicks must have reached critical mass!"

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

Of course keeping up with the reams and reams of content pouring online at any given moment is no small order. Certain parts of Google's company can be automated, but there's always going to be some hacker trying to get malware online without Google noticing. And noticing requires humans, and humans make typos. That's how a misplaced backslash made the world wobble on its axis one Saturday morning back in 2009.