Today, many Google Docs users reported problems accessing their accounts, with many taking to Twitter to lambast the company for the outage. Google responded to the issues, releasing a statement in which it confirmed the troubles numerous users have been experiencing.
“We're aware of a problem with Google Docs affecting a significant subset of users. The affected users are unable to access Google Docs,” stated the company’s service status webpage. “We will provide an update by 11/15/17, 5:30 PM detailing when we expect to resolve the problem. Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change.”
There’s no word yet on the exact number of users that are experiencing issues (anecdotally, some members of the Tom's Hardware team were and some weren't), but Google’s admission that the problem is affecting “a significant subset of users” means that these aren’t isolated incidents.
Google updated its post at 3:55pm CT, assuring users the matter is well on its way to being resolved:
“Google Docs service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users in the near future. Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change.”
We’ve reached out to Google for further comment, and will update this article as more is known about the service outage.
It's risky to put yourself in a position where another company could accidentally (or deliberately) shut down your business.
And then, of course, there's the issue where your location has power & Internet, but maybe the cloud-storage data center is offline because they're having a local power outage. Or worse, if a natural disaster (or a man-made disaster) happens & takes out the data center, you'd better hope & pray that the provider has another data center available, or you're pretty far up the creek.
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I would guess you dont really think about this at all do you. Tell me again how that scenario works where you have a local power failure and magically can access the cloud?
The cloud is where you put data if you dont care what happens to it.
"Hey, quit your whining or we'll start deleting more documents for 'content'."
Realistically, they should offer full Docs offline with the option to mirror files online, rather than cloud-only. Like Office 365.