back to article Google suffers international outages, slowdowns

Earlier today, web users across the globe were reporting outages on myriad Google services, including Gmail, Google News, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Analytics, Google Maps, Google AdSense, and Google Search. Google has acknowledged the problem and says it has now been solved, blaming the traffic slowdown on a routing …

COMMENTS

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  1. Jimbo

    yup ...

    I had issue wiht main google.com page for about an hour in the morning. Kinda hard to believe that main portal would go down like this.

  2. Niall
    IT Angle

    Yep I noticed this

    At first I thought my internet connection was down, as basically Google is my homepage and my first port of call for accessing anything on the web!

    I tried Yahoo for the first time in years as a result!

  3. SpitefulGOD
    Gates Halo

    Bilderberg

    Schmidt is at the bilderberg meetings today, he's obviously showing off how he can turn it off and one with a simple switch, prepare for mass net failures in the future

  4. Inachu
    Flame

    Rerouting internet traffic.....

    This is also what slows down connection for World of Warcraft players.

    I am sure AT&T does not like WOW players at all.

    Yesterday I was booted 5 times under a 20 minute period from the blizzard servers.

    AT&T employees are drinking too much koolaide.

  5. James

    Yahoo!

    First time I used Yahoo in ages too.

  6. Tom Taylor-Duxbury
    Happy

    Cloudy

    Clouds anyone?

  7. Bill Cumming
    Alert

    Wow....

    ... with all the outrage from twit(ers) online today I'd thought the whole world's economy has crashed because Gmail / Google / Google Calendar were down for a few hours.

    Oddly enough I never even noticed Google or Gmail were down! (and I've been using it all day!!)

  8. J
    Joke

    Eh?

    They take the data around by plane? Someone introduce these guys to the Internerd or something. No wonder so much carbon is generated by a Google search -- although the cheeseburgers and newspapers might have something to say about it too...

    Don't forget to add the icon.... done. Don't we have an icon for bad joke? I guess that's what the coat one is for, then.

  9. Christopher Ahrens

    What failure

    *hands Google a CCNA training book*

    Why do they not have a test lab for this kind of stuff? Seriously...

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Dead Vulture

    a tit is required

    what's with reporting every single minor issue with accessing some google service for an hour or so? good job the register never has outages

    http://uptime.alertra.com/uptime.php?accountID=067807&abrv=LREG

    ...oops!

    it's not the number of outages that matter really though but rather how you deal with outages - which google seems to be quite good at! (their architecture is apparently based on the expectation that some of their servers will die all the time) - unfortunately routing issues can't really be completely prevented and it's impossible to stop routing issues causing outages unless you have 2 separate networks with separate routes - which is probably overkill for anything that isn't in charge of keeping people alive (and if you're running systems that critical over public networks, they are probably already dead by now)

    anon because i criticised el reg, and that tick box will make it impossible for them to figure out who i am ;)

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    I kan has GMail now ?

    No ? Wha ? Not yet ?

  12. Steve
    Joke

    Ok whos been...

    Googleing for Google in Google

    We told you it breaks the internet....

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    ah, that explains why

    I kept getting "waiting for google-analytics" messages earlier...

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    re: Christopher Ahrens

    your an ass. hardware faults dont show up in a test lab

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    @Anonymous Coward Posted Thursday 14th May 2009 20:49 GMT

    "it's impossible to stop routing issues causing outages unless you have 2 separate networks with separate routes - which is probably overkill for anything that isn't in charge of keeping people alive"

    OK, so you're not in charge of critical websites then. And you don't know why a Google outage is a big deal.

    Why are you arrogant, then?

    FYI, these days the world+dog run their crap on multiple networks. There are even specialized large scale ISPs that trunk multiple carriers together, when you plug in your fiber cable.

    And google outages are important for their relevance to the reliability of cloud computing. you really do not want to be the CTO of a company that keeps their docs at google today.

    If you add the above two things together, you're talking multibillion dollars businesses. That's why this is important.

  16. The Dorset Rambler

    Oh dear....

    anon because i criticised el reg, and that tick box will make it impossible for them to figure out who i am ;)

    It's like filming a nature documentary - you want to help, but you have to stand by and watch as the lickle antelope becomes lunch....

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    Hahahahahaha

    If you're thinking Google, think Microsoft - BIG TARGET. So why bother when there are superior services out there? Dogpile for searches (no Google profiling or search rank manipulation), my ISP's interweb mail thingy that plugs into Outlook. In my book, anyone who uses Google for anything is a) behind the times and b) dumping their data on the US government - seen who Google execs share a little airport with?

  18. The Voice of Reason
    Happy

    No Complaints Here

    To my mind, as far as free web services go, Google provides amongst the best, & widest range there is (besides El Reg's, of course!)

  19. Quirkafleeg
    Coat

    Re: Eh?

    “They take the data around by plane?”

    Well, at least they're making backups while over Asia…

  20. Oninoshiko

    Re: Tom Taylor-Duxbury

    google's system is a cloud.

    (Or was that the point? I can't tell if you think it's the answer or a bunch of hype)

  21. jake Silver badge

    You gets what you pays for.

    These days, any company that doesn't maintain their own email server is foolish.

    I have absolutely zero sympathy.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    WTF

    Why is my bank using Google-Analitics?

    Bastards

  23. Tim Brown
    Alert

    Google's pervasiveness is bad for the web

    The problem now is that so many other sites use Google Adsense or Analytics or both that if Google has a problem so does a lot of the web.

    So many web pages stall loading with a 'waiting for pagead2.google.com' or whatever.

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Of course they have to...

    ... route everything through Asia now and then.

    So that they can legally gather all that data!

  25. Walking Turtle
    Coat

    Eggs+Basket

    Ancient Wisdom of the Human Race describes the Thing Then Unheard-Of yet again. Sorted!

    As for that meet-up with the Bilderbergers mentioned by Spiteful God @ 17:50 GMT: That does it. Given only the accuracy of Spiteful God's assertion, the ol' "Don't Be Evil" GoogleMotto is here and now declared Officially and Infandously Hypocritical, per Backchannel-Informed Fiat of Walking Turtle, All the appropriate caveats and boyctts do thus hereby apply to every emptor.

    Gah. Blarg. Plugh!

    Mine's the one with the somewhat battered copy of the Complete Works of Aesop in the pocket. Rght next to the paperback of Sun Tsu's Art of War.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    Same old same old

    It's always the weakest that kills you

  27. Alan
    Happy

    Advertising works...

    For the first time this millennium I used Ask Jeeves because Google was out.

    When the Google page wouldn't load I was at a loss, I couldn't think of another search service, then the Jeeves ad came on the telly and answered my prayers...

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    @ Walking Turtle

    "Don't be evil" was never a corporate motto, it was always a warning to us. The fanbois still don't get it.

  29. chris
    Coat

    Still quicker than NHS Mail

    Despite all that -Gmail was still quicker than NHS Mail

    S'all relative y'see?

  30. jake Silver badge

    @Alan

    "When the Google page wouldn't load I was at a loss, I couldn't think of another search service,"

    Try Metacrawler. Not affiliated, just a happy user, etc.

  31. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Anonymous Coward Posted Thursday 14th May 2009 21:48 GMT

    multiple upstreams and multiple networks are different things

    you can have 10 upstreams, but traffic from a specific source will pick one of those upstreams to come in through - for example from my home ISP traffic to google appears to go via LINX, if there's an issue at LINX i lose access to google - the only way to prevent this is if there is another IP Address not routed via LINX that my client can use instead

    remember if a link has a fault then it might not always cause automatic re-routing if it isn't detected, and if it is detected then it will still take time before the routing propagates and service is restored via other routes

    so yes the only way to ensure 100% availability is by having 2 different active routes which do not share any common equipment, which means effectively 2 networks (although if they are interconnected they could still form 1 physical network, whilst being 2 separate logical networks) - google do not do this, as all of their routes are advertised to their peers causing the peers to send all traffic over that same peering route

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