Google Fails, Talks about Flight Paths to Asia
Google issued an apology for a problem with the company’s system that saw disruptions spanning several Google services for extended periods of time last week.
The problem began with Google’s search engine. However, Google owns many an internet service and they too began to feel the effects with users of Gmail, Google News and Youtube complaining that they could not access the services.
Google claims the outage lasted for roughly an hour Thursday morning and says that the reason for the outages was that some traffic was mistakenly routed through Asia. In a sort of round about way using plan and flight route analogies, the company explains that roughly 14 percent of users were affected by last week’s technical problems.
Google went on to say that it was very sorry that the problem had occurred at all and that it was working to ensure that the problem didn’t reoccur. Anyone here feel the effects of what people are calling Googlefail? Let us know below!
Full statement from Google:
"Imagine if you were trying to fly from New York to San Francisco, but your plane was routed through an airport in Asia. And a bunch of other planes were sent that way too, so your flight was backed up and your journey took much longer than expected. That's basically what happened to some of our users today for about an hour, starting at 7:48 am Pacific time.
An error in one of our systems caused us to direct some of our web traffic through Asia, which created a traffic jam. As a result, about 14% of our users experienced slow services or even interruptions. We've been working hard to make our services ultrafast and "always on," so it's especially embarrassing when a glitch like this one happens. We're very sorry that it happened, and you can be sure that we'll be working even harder to make sure that a similar problem won't happen again. All planes are back on schedule now."
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I'm not worried. This is the first problem I've had with them - they beat pretty much any other Internet service.
Apparently Google's "everything remains in beta" philosophy applies to their webhosting as well. How do you accidently route 14% of your traffic through asia?
I've never been affected by a google outtage, but monthly reports on outtages don't give me much confidence that they know what they're doing. Some people pay a big premium for reliability, but I guess while Google remains free we're going to keep getting what we pay for. I feel sorry for companies that pay google for things like Corporate Email and whatnot.
Translation: Imagine a clusterfuck of problems.
Ahhh.........this might explain why I was getting an error message in gmail about my system administrator blocking the chat function...
It got pretty slow for me. I couldn't use google for a spell.
We had a problem of sorts here in Brazil.. But one hour?? It was more likely two and a half hours...
I don't think I was using anything Google related at the time, so I wouldn't have noticed. It is nice to see the humor in the plane analogy though
yeah, I couldnt look for porn using google, so I had to use yahoo.
14% for an hour... out 8760 hours in a year... that's not bad.
Also does anyone remember not to put all your eggs in one basket?
I had problems, any site that used google's ad services wouldn't work for me along with gmail and google maps and such. But hey it's all good now
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Yea, I got hit. I thought it was a sure sign of the apocalypse if Google search was down. Fortunately, I was wrong...
loool
When Google was down for me, I though of the Tom's article on how the internet would collapse in 2012. I was like, "3 years early, dang!"
At least they are mature enough to blame them selves and apologize for it...
Not that they really have to, since most of us use their services all for free
If their NOC was working properly they should have noticed the huge spike, or dip depending on the side, and immediately notified whomever made the change. Sounds like a broken system to me.
It's not a big deal. Google is a large company and is obligated by its notoriety to better itself and to ensure that service downtime isn't equated with the Google branding. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger...
Rookie routing error.