What Happens When Google Encounters a Fail Whale
Thursday, May 14th, 2009
The end of the world, as we know it.
Apparently, only a small subset of us are being affected. However, it seems the masses are having issues with everything from Gmail, to Google Talk, to Google Search.
Our saga begins when Twitter shows signs of trending, distressed Tweeps, and of course the ever popular hashtag (#gfail and #googlefail in this case).
Not to worry, I think to myself, I can live without Google for a little bit while they fix the problem.
Thinking I’m high and mighty in such a catastrophe, I soon remember I’ve been patiently awaiting an email from a client whom, I happen to know, exclusively uses only Gmail. I had to wait a solid hour for that blessed email.
The ego continues to slowly chips away as I realize just how much I use my Google Docs. Not only that, but I actually do use my Gmail, and even a basic Image search to find a picture of Earth imploding becomes utterly impossible.
I decided I could forget my own egotistical Google issues for long enough to pleasantly watch the most recent blogpost I’d written be tweeted and retweeted. But to add insult to injury, I found Google’s issues went deeper: to Google Analytics. I saw that as my blog loaded and transferred traffic data, it got stuck and timed out.
Since then, the problems have been fix, per Google’s official Twitter account,
The issue affecting some Google services has been resolved. We’re sorry for the inconvenience, and we’ll share more details soon.
And here it is explained via the Official Blog.
It is amazing though, and got me to thinking: what would we do without Google? @JackLeblond jokes we might actually switch to Yahoo:
Perhaps the google servers on ebay were failed attempt to raise $$ and now they are shutting down….quick everyone optimize for Yahoo now!
At least yesterday, when Twitter shut down for maintenance, we had something to do while we waited.
Nicki Hicks
I blog while Gmail is down