Sometimes, the use of Google's many products have unintended and good side effects. Case in point: Google's search engine alone is being used to identify and track the activity of malicious websites. You know, the websites that attempt (and often succeed) in dropping viruses and malware onto the computers of unsuspecting web surfers?

Online security vendor WebSense has been using Google's capability to actually search through and index the binary executable programs (.EXE for you Microsoft OS vets out there) to identify strings of binary data that actually harmful and destructive computer code. These pieces of code and actual programs sit in the background of many websites waiting for any and all visitors to show up -- and then they usually and silently install something on the visitor's computer that is, well, not a good thing.

On the flip side, some smart hackers (there are plenty of those) could manipulate they way they drop malware onto web surfers' PCs by including search terms in their executable programs and also by trying to work around the Google capability of having their programs indexed and identified as malicious. Just like prolific email spammers, hackers will always try to find a workaround to ensure their criminal activity can continue unabated. It seems Google can create the most helpful search systems in the world at the same time making it possible for computer criminals to propagate their nastiness on an unprecedented scale.