On Monday the 14th December the online world stopped for over 40 minutes – most of Googles services went down. This put a lot of businesses out of action, affecting not only their usual day-to-day operations but also creating a lot of stress and uncertainty. This also had an impact on the whole education sector and as you can imagine online learners were unable to access their learning materials and effectively continue with their study. I was amongst those affected students too!
The services affected were as follows:
- YouTube
- Gmail
- Google classroom
- Google docs
- Parts of Google Drive
- Parts of the Search Engine
- All home devices such as Google Home
Within the first 10 minutes Twitter went crazy! Hashtags with the word Google almost broke the entire Internet. You could see across Twitter #YOUTUBEDOWN, #GOOGLEDOWN or #GOOGLE..
Businesses and individuals across the UK used the Internet and major social media platforms such as Twitter or Facebook to comment and complain about Google going down unexpectedly. People needed answers straight away, but Google was silent trying to fix their issue. People were coming up with their own conclusions to what had happened, claiming it was a Cyber Attack. After 45 minutes of this uncertainty, Google went back online and released a statement to confirm what had happened, putting an end to all those wrong allegations!
Google’s statement said: “Today, at 3.47AM PT Google experienced an authentication system outage for approximately 45 minutes due to an internal storage quota issue. This was resolved at 4:32AM PT, and all services are now restored.”
On the one hand this proves that technology, and Google in this case, is deeply embedded in our everyday life to the point that when a disaster happens this not only affects our daily routines but also creates a substantial amount of stress or even panic. On the other hand, this serves as a good example, proving that a good backup solution should be part of every business regardless of its size. Without a good backup solution Google would not be able to get back up and running within minutes. It helped the company to restore everything to its working state relatively quickly.
We are amongst the most trusted backup providers so if you need any advice about the solution you are currently using, or are considering a new backup option, you should talk to us. Recovering the data from your backup is the quickest way to get your company back up and running. Recovering data for your company if no backup is in place is impossible.
Talk to us – we have a solution for you!
Cameron
(Apprentice IT Technician)
