Last week my website and the No Agenda podcast listener support page were both blacklisted for malware. In some instances I am still waiting for the blacklisting to be lifted. Peachy.

It's funny how the site can be blacklisted in a millisecond by an analysis but I have to wait forever to get cleared by the same analysis doing the same scan. Why is that?

The curious thing is that this was browser-level blacklisting by both Firefox and Chrome. It was not some Net Nanny blacklisting or localized blacklisting like that used by corporations or governments. This blacklist is orchestrated by Google. Since when is it OK for a huge company like Google, which dominates Internet search and phone operating systems, to assume the role of the Internet police?

And since when did any of this happen at the browser level rather than at the ISP or subnet level? I see this as a tremendous conflict of interest. What happens when Google puts Microsoft Bing on the blacklist? While Internet Explorer does not appear to be a subscriber to these blacklisting services, why isn't Microsoft complaining about this development?

Firefox and Chrome combined dominate the browser business with more than 62 percent market share. Chrome browser is the fastest growing browser and anyone using it was the first to find my site blacklisted by the Google police. Generally when I hit a site trying to send me malware, the Avast antivirus crops up and blocks it. I wonder how any of these sites managed not to get blacklisted while my site does.

The problem was a malicious iframe that was injected from a router or who knows what. It's now blocked at the site level by changing some configuration variables. I found it peculiar that you could go to the site directly, except with Chrome, but if you routed through the Google search engine, you'd get the iframe code. I also reported this strange occurrence to the services that front for Google and try to explain the cause of the blacklisting. (Here is a jpeg of the screenshot.) It indicated that Google was infected.

It's impossible to know what this message means. I reported it to Google's press office, an anonymous box at the company that seldom responds to anything. It didn't respond. Google PR is going to be the downfall of the company someday.

Anyway, my woes will eventually get resolved but I'm not so sure my concerns will ever get addressed in any good way. This again is the idea of browser-level blacklisting, the potential for its abuse, and the lame way it is handled. That means instead of the blacklist correcting itself you have to use Google webmaster tools.

My friend Marc Perkel, who runs the Junk Email Filter service that hosts a number of radical political websites, asked me what would happen if the government told Google to blacklist Wikileaks. Although Google has fought some battles with the government, it's not winning them all. "Are we going to have to compile our own browsers in the future?" he asked. Maybe. Does anyone want to bring out a do-it-yourself browser kit? It might be a good idea.

With little fanfare or notification Google has put itself into an awkward and compromising position. Conflicts of interest and potential for abuse are written all over this initiative.

Even though it seems like a good idea to Google, it's not. It is currently working for the benefit of users, but can anyone guarantee that it will continue to do so? This is like the monkey with a gun. He hasn't shot anyone yet, but is it a good idea to give the gun to the monkey in the first place?

The lack of outrage by the computing community is quite baffling, to say the least. Instead I was attacked for complaining. I'm still waiting to be cleared from the blacklist as this is written.

Check back later this week for an update.