Ads by TechWords

See your link here
Receive the latest technology news and information.
Networking
Computerworld Daily News (First Look and Wrap-Up)
Computerworld Blogs Newsletter
The Weekly Top 10
Cloud Computing
View all newsletters




Privacy Policy
 

Google suffers major failure

Various Google Apps start kicking back in after widespread outage this morning

May 14, 2009 01:12 PM ET

Computerworld - The Internet was abuzz with reports of widespread trouble with Google Inc.'s Google Apps service this morning.

Google Search and Google News performance slowed to a crawl, while an outage seemed to spread from Gmail to Google Maps and Google Reader. Comments about the failure were flying on Twitter, and "googlefail" quickly became one of the most-searched terms on the popular microblogging site.

By around noon Eastern time, the outages had started clearing up.

"We're aware some users are having trouble accessing some Google services," said a Google spokesman in an e-mail to Computerworld. "We're looking into it, and we'll update everyone soon."

When the outage began, many users turned to Twitter to vent their frustrations and to look for information.

"Google isn't down, it's engaging in mortal combat with Wolfram Alpha," wrote one Twitterer this morning, referring to a highly anticipated new search engine. Another said, "So Google goes down and the Internet almost stops and Google becomes most talked about thing on the net today. Yahoo anyone???"

Twitter users also were quick to begin reporting that the trouble was clearing up. "Google is back and I've stopped twitching," said one Tweet.

Ezra Gottheil, an analyst at Technology Business Research, said this kind of outage is going to be tough on Google.

"As far as I can tell, all of Google, or at least the big pieces, went down," he said. "This is bad news for Google's efforts to build up Apps, and to a lesser extent, Gmail, as critical business tools. It also undermines the entire category of hosted applications. If the mighty Google can stumble, then who can be trusted?"

In February, Google's Gmail had a highly publicized two-and-a-half-hour outage.

That February outage came just a week after Google acknowledged that some users had experienced problems getting results from Google News searches over a span of more than 14 hours. Some users reported that they weren't getting any results when searching for keywords, such as Microsoft and even Google, in Google News. Other users reported that entire news sections, such as Science/Technology, were coming up empty of stories.

And last December, Google confirmed that there was a technical problem with Google Talk and the Web-based Gmail chat system. One day early in the month, messages created by a "subset" of users were left unsent because of glitches in the messaging system, according to Google spokesman Andrew Kovacs.

The scope of today's outage isn't immediately clear but it appears to be international.

Read more about internet applications in Computerworld's Internet Applications Knowledge Center.



Jump to comments

Google

Additional Resources

EFD vs. HDD - What You Need to Know
WHITE PAPER
Enterprise flash drives provide a new Tier 0 storage layer capable of delivering high I/O performance at a very low latency. Proper use of EFDs in an Oracle environment can deliver increased performance compared to fibre channel drives. Read the recommendations for identification of the best DB components for EFDs.
Gartner Research Report: Magic Quadrant for Application Delivery Controllers, 2009
WHITE PAPER
The market for products to improve the delivery of application software over networks remains dynamic and innovative. Vendors focused on solving enterprises' most-pressing application problems have become the top players.
Eight Criteria for Server Load Balancing
WHITE PAPER
Server load balancers are a simple yet highly effective means to scale an application environment while ensuring its availability. Today's solutions should also address application performance and security. Read about the top eight criteria you should consider when choosing a server load balancer and how Citrix NetScaler meets those requirements.

What People Are Saying

White Papers & Webcasts

Moving Beyond Monolithic White Paper
What's next for enterprise application architecture? Learn Now.  

The Workday User Experience Video
Watch Workday's Creative Director, Scott Lietzke, discuss the business-centered design philosophy at Workday.

The ROI of Software-As-A-Service - Forrester Research
Learn if SaaS has a long-term value. Read now.  

Virtualize Microsoft Applications on VMware
Register for this live webcast now!

Global at the Core White Paper
Learn the business and technology benefits of Workday's global approach to enterprise applications.  

The Workday User Interface White Paper
Read how Workday re-invents the user experience in enterprise applications.  

Aligning IT to Business: The Rising Importance of Application Delivery Networks
Application Delivery Networking (ADN) will play a vital role in helping enterprises incorporate strategic technologies to achieve business initiatives.

Measurement Specialties
Download this case study!  

Preparing Your Business Services for the Future
Would you trust your network monitoring tools enough to know when something is truly halting a business service?

Disaster Recovery & Cost Savings Zone
Thousands of customers world-wide have turned to virtualization solutions from Riverbed as a way to reduce costs.



IT Jobs