Google Outage: Internet Traffic Plunges 40% 352
cold fjord writes "Is 40% anything to worry about? Sky News reports, 'Worldwide internet traffic plunged by around 40% as Google services suffered a complete black-out, according to web analytics experts. The tech company said all of its services from Google Search to Gmail to YouTube to Google Drive went down for between one and five minutes last night. The reason for the outage is not yet known, and Google refused to provide any further information when contacted by Sky News Online. According to web analytics firm GoSquared, global internet traffic fell by around 40% during the black-out, reflecting Google's massive grip on the web. "That's huge," said GoSquared developer Simon Tabor. "As internet users, our reliance on Google.com being up is huge."'
How many people don't know a 2nd search engine? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder for how many people the internet becomes completely inaccessible without Google? (I also still occasionally meet people who do not know what a 'browser' is, and who think that IE is their only option).
Google is a good search engine, but there are alternatives. If Google stopped working, I wouldn't suffer very much, I think. (When Gmail crashes, I think that for gmail users this is another issue... but I use alternative email).
Re:Not surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a bit like the early 90's.
I had almost everyone's telephone number memorized, then cellphones got popular and slowly I forgot everyone's telephone number as they were now coded into my cellphone.
I suspect something similar is at play here.
People* don't really remember full urls any more, they just search for the closest and Google sorts the rest.
* When I say people, I mean the general public.
Re:Facebook (Score:4, Insightful)
I have been astonished how Microsoft/Apple have been prepared to squander their respective advantages by not having a social network, preferring to support Facebook against Google.
Probably because they're not fools.
You know who talks about G+? G+ users. That's about it. The value of a social network is based on the number of people involved, and Google failed hardcore at attracting users. Having blown their load, G+ is about as much of a threat to Facebook as MySpace is.
Re:How many people don't know a 2nd search engine? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:As I keep having to say to my older family.. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you type in the url wrong, you go somewhere wrong. You also have to get the . and the com right. To top that off, they already need to use a search engine for other things, so by using it for everything they have one less thing to think about. It makes perfect sense. You are like a carpenter wondering why everyone else doesn't have $100k worth of woodworking tools lying around. What if they need a triangle-shaped saw, you ask, what are those fools going to do then? Why won't they invest the time and money into learning the right tool for the job? Because they don't need those specialized tools that you and I use.
Fake numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
40% did NOT drop. 40% measured by this one stats agency dropped. They don't measure Bittorrent, Usenet, Netflix or other bandwidth eaters. The real number is likely to be much much lower.
Re:As I keep having to say to my older family.. (Score:2, Insightful)
This is why Google is #1 and Facebook respectively is #2
NSA Wiretap installed (Score:4, Insightful)
NSA installed one of it's man.in.the.middle data centers perhaps.
Re:Google+ is growing (Score:5, Insightful)
As a Google+ user, I definitely don't want Google and Facebook to capture the same market. People are definitely part of the reason why I prefer G+ over Facebook.
Re:Not surprising (Score:2, Insightful)
I had almost everyone's telephone number memorized, then cellphones got popular and slowly I forgot everyone's telephone number as they were now coded into my cellphone.
Your analogy compares better with bookmarks though.
What people are doing now is calling like 411 every time they want to call their friends.
Re:So. It has come to this. (Score:5, Insightful)
It wasn't 40% of "the internet", it was 40% of internet traffic and the bulk of it would have been YouTube streaming videos. Netflix is also quite a large proportion. No need to panic though, they are just bandwidth heavy protocols, not 40% of every service and website on the internet.
Re:How many people don't know a 2nd search engine? (Score:5, Insightful)
Firefox's search engine drop-down selector.
Re:How many people don't know a 2nd search engine? (Score:4, Insightful)
But if you put your scripts in the same place as the rest of your website, then while the uptime may not be as good, it at least exactly correlates with the uptime of the rest of the site.
Your site will be down if the hosting provider of that site is down, or if the hosting provider of the scripts is down. Having a different hosting provider can only ever mean more potential downtime.
Re:Google+ is growing (Score:3, Insightful)
This is not the result of the social network you use. It is the result of you choosing to only let in your circle people with whom you want a certain kind of conversation.
Re:Not surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Why?
Re:Google+ is growing (Score:2, Insightful)
Google+ is only growing because google is tricking/forcing people onto it. Friend of mine accidentally got g+ when Youtube popped up some bullshit thing as he went to comment. When he found out, he killed it, only to lose all of his videos, subscribers, etc. Google is so desperate for numbers to throw up for people to drool at, they are trying to force people who don't want to be on their social bullshit network to do so.