The article delivers. Why is this linkbait?

He included screenshots and a description. Neither are impossible to fake, but either it's a genuine mistake (in which case I would imagine someone would have pointed it out) or he's faking it.

You seem to be accusing him of faking, without any evidence or even a motive.

Edit: also http://www.jamesbreckenridge.co.uk/what-i-learned-today.html

Also, what is the link you supplied supposed to show? To me, it's like someone who, hearing the accuracy of Genesis' creation story challenged due to lack of supporting evidence, replies, "Yes, but Exodus says the same thing." It's the same source making the same claim, with no corroboration.

You imagine that someone would have pointed out an honest mistake, but that could take time. Is absence of an immediate counter-demonstration proof (or even evidence) of truth? I don't think it works that way. See Fleischmann–Pons.

I understand your point, but this is different to Fleischmann–Pons because of Google's capacity to change things.

In any case, http://searchengineland.com/google-disables-url-removals-aft... appears to indicate that Google has disabled the tool and are investigating. That indicates to me that it isn't totally fake at least. Maybe it only happens in some circumstances, or maybe there is some other explanation, but I doubt Google would disable the tool completely if what he claimed didn't have some basis.

FWIW, I just submitted a removal request via GWT for a page on my own site, and the request was accepted without complaint and is pending. Maybe Google turned the tool back on already.

I tried a request for a page on my wife's site, via the prescribed URL mangling, and it was silently ignored.

re: Google's capacity to change things, that's exactly what I thought should trigger more skepticism: Not only has no one repeated the experiment -- no one ever can. Now it's history, and that can get murky.

But thank you for the link -- another voice is good evidence in my book.

Was it the "I'm not saying it's fake" part that made it seem to you that I seem to be accusing him of faking?

My point is that the evidence is wholly insufficient. It was the first post on a new blog (i.e. no reputation), no way to reproduce the reported issue, no reports of it having been reproduced by anyone else, no acknowledgment from Google (ok, maybe it's a little early for that), etc. I mean, from a journalistic, much less scientific, standpoint, it's pretty poor.

How can I provide evidence of a negative? Would you please provide evidence disproving my assertion that flying saucers visited my house last night? And motive? Wasn't that covered earlier by the word "linkbait"?

Maybe my calibration is way off today, but I'm surprised by the level of credulity I've been seeing. My original post (which I deleted and then reposted, sorry about that) got downvoted to subzero with no explanation. I agree with other posters that bugs happen, but I would have thought that such a major claim against a generally competent player like Google would require at least one independent verification.

I'll be curious to see if Google mentions this. Otherwise, we'll really never know. Well, you may, but I guess I'm a little more skeptical.

I think there were multiple reasons you were being downvoted:

1) The grandparent to your post accused the post of being linkbait, without explaining it in anyway. You appeared to be supporting this without any evidence that it was linkbait.

2) You took the discussion about it being linkbait, and introduced the accusation that the post was faked (not withstanding your "I'm not saying it is fake thing" - if you aren't saying that, then what are you saying?), which was totally unrelated to the thread of conversation.

3) You didn't provide any justification that it was fake - merely circumstantial evidence that doesn't preclude that it could be fake. It is pretty normal for someone to expose an exploit without independent verification - especially since it appears the author hadn't considered it a security hole (note the article doesn't mention security, and they didn't find the [email protected] email address which is pretty obvious if you are using the term "security" when you search).

Given these factors, I think the downvotes were justified.

I don't think there is anything wrong with being suspicious, but I think your post would have been better received if it had presented your suspicions differently.

I'll admit that the quotes around "screenshots" exposed a bias (though I privately considered "honest mistake" a real contender), so I'll take my lumps.

But I stand by my main point: I don't see any REASON to BELIEVE.* The only thing separating malice, incompetence and good work here are the unknown motives of some guy with an internet connection -- possibly an NYU student of Panos Ipeirotis, if you caught that story. I think it was fair to ask why people felt so confident with their "OMG! Google is incompetent!" posts, so quickly. I guess I picked the wrong grandparent.

* You've kindly provided a corroborating source, so "good work" is looking more likely.

How does the article deliver? I don't see, in the comments on his blog or here, any evidence that this has been independently reproduced. He's got a description, and some "screenshots" and, oh, Google seems to already have fixed it. How... convenient?

I'm not saying it's fake, but I don't see any reason to believe it. Am I missing something?

You have unreasonable standards of evidence. He is not claiming to have seen Bigfoot, he has found a vulnerability in a web service.