Google Experiences Downtime

Earlier today, Google experienced what seemed to be outages (downtime) in various locations around the world.  Most of the outages appeared to take place in the United States, however, there were also reports of downtime in some European countries too. While this is not the first time (or the last) Google has experienced downtime (or mishaps) it appears to be one of the longest and widespread cases.

A number of Google web services including Google Search, GMail, Google Apps, and even YouTube experienced downtime or extremely slow load times which rendered the services useless.  I personally experienced approximately 45 minutes to an hour of downtime on all of the above listed services.

Being that I use Google Apps and Gmail for a mjaority of my email usage this resulted in no email access for that period of time.  I was also unable to search (using Google) which literally made me feel helpless – so much so, that I got up from my computer and went to do something else offline (I know that’s quite a shock).

Nonetheless, it goes to show the dependence we have on Google which I have talked about before.  Google is not just a search engine – it’s a way of life.  I truly believe that.  That is why this company has become such a success.  If you can build a product that people rely on every single day, then you have built a solid product.

Did you experience a Google outage?  Leave a comment!  By the way, does anyone have any recent figures on Google’s annual downtime?