> It's interesting to me that people seem generally comfortable with the mechanisms browsers use to determine if a site is unsafe in the sense that it has a track record of carrying malware ("Google has detected harmful content")

I am definitely not comfortable with that considering that I know it contains false postives that google does not care to do anything about. Most people don't even know about google safe browsing or how realize how much control it gives Google.

BTW, VirusTotal is also run by Google which they are not very open about.

> I guess people know what malware looks like

I have yet to find anyone that does. Certainly not the anti-virus industry.