Slashdot Mirror
Google Traffic Takes Down Web Site
bazonkers writes "Searchenginelowdown.com reports that it appears that the Google logo yesterday (honoring Gaston Julia) linked to the Google image search results for the words 'julia fractal'. The resulting traffic generated from clicking on that 'featured logo' incapacitated the servers of the top-listed images, hosted at an Australian university. This more than inconvenienced the owners of that site, who had to move pages and ended up displaying this page instead."
Looks like no one has heard of /.
You guys are mean. First they the googled and now they get slashdoted....
Cheers,
RoadkillBunny
Oh beautiful!
Let's add slashdot to our list of sites DDOSing us!
Wow, you Slashdot Editors like kicking people while they're down, huh?
And while we're at it, why not make the file redirect to www.sco.com? Oh wait... that's been done.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
...and this sort of thing is news on SLASHDOT???
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I mean, really, use some common sense here...
- A
So if a Slashdotting is abbreviated as "/.ed", I guess this site was 100000000000000000... well you get the point.
Google just proved that they aren't in the content business, just the search business. When Google made a rare and somewhat nonsensical editorial comment in the form of their modified logo, many people clicked the logo to see where it lead, and where it lead to was a Google image search that yeilded interesting results, so people clicked the images in the hope for information about Gaston Julia...
Google should have written their own article explaining why they decided that Gaston Julia was worthy of being honored. Instead, they simply supplied a suggested search query and passed the curious users to sites who weren't expecting the rush... if Google had asked, I'm sure they would have been able to get an academic to write a decent page to satisfy the curious users, but Google seems to have underestimated the power they have...
leave it to slashdot to do it again today with monster truck force!!
I was just about to point out the same thing. Oh well... I think I'll go and reload the site a couple more times, just to rub it in.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
wonder why Google didn't react in time to link to its own cache instead?
Smooth.
Imagine just how much money could Google make if they sold just a small ad on their home page on a 24-hour basis occasionally, maybe even limited to modifying the Google logo in an agreed upon way linked to a page on the sponsoring site. http://www.google.com has to be the most hit page on the planet right now, so such an ad would have awesome power and be able to command top dollar.
Google's clearly taking the high road by making their home page an ad-page zone. I wonder how long that's going to last after the IPO and by definition, profit-hungry interests (such as your 401k plan) get control of the company.
HAHA, maybe /. and G00GLE can do a tag team on them again. Can you feel that? Huh, Huh?
'click'
Page already loading slow, here's the full text
Using Google?
Looking for images of quaternion fractals?
On the 3rd of February 2004, this page (or rather the page that was here) was swamped by requests and the server subsequentially failed. The reason was traced to Google introducing a fractal looking logo (see below), which when clicked, performed an image search for "julia" and "fractal". The two most interesting resulting images on the top row of the list were on this page (or rather the page that was here).
[Image used without permission from Google]
In order to get this server functional again, the pages that were here have been moved somewhere else. It shouldn't be too hard to find them if you really want to, do a Google search for "Quaternion fractal" or if you would like to create your own Quaternion fractals try POVRay.
Please note that this is not a criticism of Google but rather an interesting dimension to the power they wield. They have hundreds (thousands?) of servers worldwide that distribute their traffic load. If even a small percentage of that traffic is directed to a single server.....what chance does it have?
Questions: Should Google ask permission before potentially sending huge traffic loads to a single page/server? Should they regulate traffic to individual sites/pages by changing the order of the search results?
Happy searching!
Google giveth
and Google taketh away
Blessed is Google?
[Roger Bagula]
Sig? What sig?
Google should make every link go to Slashdot, and slashdot should make every link go to Google. (Though I fear many googlers that read slashdot would be scarred for life)
webpage
The server in question, by domain name at least, seems to indicate that Google's USA homepage was directing viewers on a path that led to a server in Australia. Just wondering... did any of the trans-oceanic network links show any visible spikes in traffic as a result of this event?
I'm a little surprised that this has never happened before, as they often have featured logos. I guess those fractals must have just looked too alluring, and people had to see them. Then again, i'm quite surprised that so many people click on the featured graphic, perhaps people who aren't familiar with Julia, and were interested in what the graphic meant?
The key difference here is that when something gets posted to Slashdot, people often have the ability to grab and post mirrors. Like this one, for instance.
(You're welcome.)
Upon reading the article heading, my first thought was also "Oh great, now they're gonna get a whooping from slashdot as well!", but, of course, the first N-teen posts are all the same thing. So, "AOL!" to you all!
No fair, guys, April is almost 2 months away....
Yow! I'm supposed to have a plan?
I wonder who generates more traffic, google or slashdot... Google has far more traffic, I'm certain, but Slashdotters travel very specific links.
What's more dangerous to your bandwidth - top link on a google doodle or a slashdotting?
"Adventure? Excitement? A Jedi craves not these things."
The article on Gaston Julia got a LOT of edits in the last two days.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Google clearly has an international network of highly powered servers that have the ability to send out content via HTTP. Maybe Google could open up a side business for those who need a lot of web capacity fast for a short duration, for those who want to keep their websites up despite a major media mention that will quickly subside.
And while reporting incapacitated australian univ servers on slashdot, Searchenginelowdown.com is being hosted on a new site called Searchenginedown.com
Free XBox, PS2
Let's assume that for an hour google secretely replaces all href's in all results to slashdot.org, could half the internet take down slashdot? That'd be an interesting thing to try.
keep it simple.
No.
Because that would be the first step down the slipperly slope into a full blown portal with weather, news, horoscopes, blah, blah, blah.
Keep it clean and simple, or they will no longer be the number one
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
Wouldn't it have been more fun to have changed the pictures? I thought google actually stored the thumbnails and served them up.
If not, there are a various protections you can use to prevent the image being shown on another server (using the referrer is one, not particularly robust/compatible method) Many free websites use this method.
If google doesn't store the thumbnail, then it is not the google servers hammering them (as the site claims) but all the users doing the search. Thus it is irrelevant of how many servers google has.
I.O.U One Sig.
By phrasing the issue in a shape of a question rather than just complaining about it they really gained my respect and admiration.
Some people understand that the purpose of a university (or any educator really) is to provoke thought and to impart knowledge and information. But also to let the end user (usually a student) draw their own conclusions.
The way the page is phrased makes me think that the person behind it - even supposing I didn't know he works with fractals - is one cool guy and probably a really awesome professor.
Watch me pull a fractal outta my hat!
[Servers exploding in Australia]
Oops! Looks like I don't know m'own strenth!
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
RTFA, he injured his nose in an army operation.
In one operation on a stormy, cold night he had suffered a severe injury and thus lost his nose. After many unsuccessful operations to remedy the situation, he was forced to wear a leather strap around the area where his nose was for the rest of his life.
The IT section color scheme sucks.
I spent a good part of my afternoon visiting pages linked to that google logo. The first page of results was so slow, and half the links were timing out.
I wondered why they didn't just return random results from the first 20-30 pages of links. That would have seemed more respectful to the poor bastards running sites off freebie dial-up and university hosting accounts.
Miss Gatsby: You're very cheerful this morning, Mr Fawlty.
Basil: (cheerfully) Yes, well one of the guests has just died.
(Polly slaps Miss Tibbs, who folds up and falls to the floor)
Basil: (to Polly) Oh, spiffing! Absolutely spiffing. Well done! Two dead, twenty five to go.
Help fight continental drift.
Here's the full text from the website tomorrow:
Browsing Slashdot?
Looking for the page complaining about Google?
On the 4rd of February 2004, this page (or rather the page that was here) was swamped by requests and the server subsequentially failed. The reason was traced to Slashdot(see image below) posting an article about a webpage about Google posting an image about fractals, which when clicked accessed our web page. The link went directly to a page about google (or rather the page that was here).
[Image used without permission from Slashdot]
In order to get this server functional again, the page that was here has been moved somewhere else. It shouldn't be too hard to find it if you really want to, do a Google search for "Using google fractal" or if you would like to complain more about google try googlewatch.
Please note that this is not a criticism of Slashdot or nerd but rather an interesting dimension to the power they wield. They have hundreds (thousands?) of members worldwide that distribute their traffic load. If even a small percentage of that traffic is directed to a single server.....what chance does it have?
Questions: Should Slashdot ask permission before potentially sending huge traffic loads to a single page/server? Should they regulate traffic to individual sites/pages by allowing accesses by karma? Why do so few of them have girlfriends?
Happy slashdotting!
Slashdot nerdeth
and Google geeketh away
Blessed is the dork?
The Google page was listed on Fark yesterday. So that site has been: 1. Googled 2. Farked 3. Now /.'ed
The unintentional DDoS trifecta!
No sig, sorry.
The origional site (I think) can be found at:
q ua ternion/
http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~pbourke/fractals/
Weird, I've tried to see what Google knows about Gaston Julia, it turned out that Google doesn't actually know him.
The IT section color scheme sucks.
we feature you as a logo. ;)
Looks like google doesn't need an IPO, after all
The best planning can be done after the project completes.
Yes, but Google gave no warning that the number of searches on the term "juila fractal" was about to suddenly spike because of a hyperlink placed on a Google Doodle. People who wanted a trickle of traffic from Google got a flood.
Since this came from a google search, there is a pretty simple way to prevent this from happening, without having Google do anything - use your robots.txt to stop google from indexing your site.
Google is opt-in. If you don't want to be indexed, don't be.
Ew... that's spammer talk. Google complies with robots.txt, but that's an opt-out signal. Those with no robots.txt are presumed to want to be listed. A true opt-in system would require an affirmative robots.txt before Google spiders a site... which isn't the reality.
C'mon you geeks! Take off those pocket protectors and put on the gloves! Google's callin' you out!
Of course, Google is not obliged to warn them because their content is on public domain, but I think it would just be a matter of courtesy..
That brings to mind, should Slashdot start warning people before they are referenced here?
I run a fractal-related site, and just the leftovers from people clicking through to sites that had links to my site was enough to give me 10x the traffic. I had calls from my host and a few other problems, so I took the web sites down for a few hours while trying to help some other folks figure out what was going on.
I've been slashdotted four times or so before, so I know what it's like. The server handled it just fine, it was the connection that was the trouble.
I'm glad that the initial onslaught is over, but I'm still seeing elevated traffic levels, and probably will for a few days. This is normal for any kind of slashdotting.
People are never as simple as their stereotypes. This applies equally to Christians, Muslims, and Emacs-lovers.
just how much money could Google make if they sold just a small ad on their home page
But then, would it still be Google?
You are more than the sum of what you consume. Desire is not an occupation.
Although those fractal folks got Google-dotted (or whatever you want to call it), Janet Jackson's boob was the most searched event in internet history, beating out Sept. 11th.
IMO Google should institute a policy for links such as these; they should link to their own google cached versions, perhaps caching any other content such as images as well, instead of linking to the "featured" site.
The least they should do is warn the site of potential megatraffic. Anything less could be seen as slightly irresponsible on the part of google. However, it could also be they don't really realize how much power they really wield. Are there any google employees who read slashdot that can comment?
At 8:00 a.m. EST, my Mom IM'd me at school to tell me that the Internet as slow at home. At 9:00, my friend who uses my wiki told me that he had been letting it load for about an hour and it wasn't loading. The Xbox-Linux project's wiki also is hosted on my server, and it was inaccessible.
All these web sites are hosted on my little Linux box in my basement, on my parents' cable-modem with 40 KB/s up to the Internet. What happened to me was that the Google logo, linking to the image search for "julia fractals", had my friend Jonathan's site as the top hit. (The exact hit was this page.)
The page was all-but inaccessible, as was my server. I eventually SSH'd in, copied the files to my JHU web hosting space, and set up an Apache redirect to serve the files from there. JHU (my university) has a pretty big pipe, I've learned over the years I've been here. :-).
I mentioned this in a blog entry I made on the topic. It seems that now the search finds some other first hit, the .edu.au site mentioned in the story. Perhaps that's because my server was "Cthuugled" (eaten alive by Google, that is), and no one could reach the first link for so many hours.
|/usr/games/fortune
We can rely on the highly scientific Googlefight system.
Slashdot vs. Google - Winner: Google
Slashdotted vs. Googled - Winner: Googled
Clearly, Google is superior and far more dangerous.
Bitchslapped. Neat.
The resulting traffic generated from clicking on that 'featured logo' incapacitated the servers of the top-listed images, hosted at an Australian university. This more than inconvenienced the owners of that site, who had to move pages and ended up displaying this page instead."
*clicks on the link*
*waits*
*for awhile*
Oh, the irony...
And the masses cried out, "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0!"
You'd think that google could at least cache the top 10 hits or so, on their own servers , then only direct say 1/3 of the traffic at the origional servers.
.. if they are going to generate that amount of traffic all the time, at least they could be smart about it.
I mean come on
This more than inconvenienced the owners of that site, who had to move pages and ended up displaying this page instead."
On the other hand, you could say that it benefited the owners of the site. After all, people were interested enough in fractals and/or Julia (or just the picture they saw), to follow up and seek out more information. Isn't the purposes of those sites to provide information to people interested in fractals?
Chances are, people who found the sites down will follow up the same links today or tomorrow to read more about fractals. Ultimately, it will increase traffic (and interest) to those sites. Thats's a good thing.
I would like to see Google create a link from the main "Google" picture to Slashdot, and at the same time get Slashdot to write a post about it linking to the Google site, and see who's servers drown first.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
What's more, a lot of users (myself included) by-pass the homepage completely, and go straight to a search using various nifty tools - from forms on 3rd-party websites to search toolbars to bookmarklets and other browser tricks. So adverts on the front page would probably get less hits than the ones on the searches.
why not sue google for infringing on slashdots patent for taking down web servers?
When I worked summers up on Cape Cod Mass at a family-owned pizza shop, a couple times during the summer we'd have the /. pizza effect -- the local sea camps would call in an order for 200 pizzas, or a couple of tour busses would pull in the lot with 100 hungry riders.
Did they call in advance? Did they ask permission to swamp us? Did we redirect them out the door and decline their order? Of course not. Variability in demand is a part of business.
The same goes for the half-dozen toys that Time Magazine says are the hot Christmas items, which suddenly disappear from the shelves. Should shoppers be restricted from buying them in order to maintain a few on the shelves?
Suddenly popular websites have the same consequence to the consumer - unavailability of supply. People find alternatives, come back later, etc.
So am I missing something dramatically new here?
I have absolutely no idea how this got moderated +5 interesting. What are you trying to say, here? That Google isn't "in the content business?" Of course Google isn't in the content business...that's why they're called a search engine, not a "content engine." They find other people's content for you...that's how a search engine works.
There was no "editorial comment." They change the logo to reflect an important event in history on any given day...it just so happened that Gaston Julia's birthday was that day. They're a search engine, and they want to promote their searching ability...why would they waste time and money hiring someone to write an article about fractals?
I'm not trying to flame or anything, but what exactly where you trying to say?
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
Imagine a... no, it's already a cluster.
I, for one, welc... damn, that doesn't work either: Google's already a God.
In soviet r... shit!! it doesn't work the other way around!
Formula for success:
1. Create interesting website about fractals.
2. Put it on the internet on the day Google honours Gaston Julia.
3. Prof... FUCK, there's no money to be made there, plus I didn't use the "???" step!
I give up.
I would disagree. At least somewhat.
People put things on their sites, so people can see, but most folks don't want everyone to see.
I have pictures of my newborn boy on the web. I want certain people to see these pics but would prefer no one else.
What options do I have? Password protect them? Not realistic.
Rather, I figure no one is interested in these pics so no one will bother.
But many times slashdot posts a article knowing it will kill the site. Not very nice in my book.
...we have a new definition of google-wack
Yes, but whats that got to do with the price of tea in D'ni?
"A NASA guy [That was me, but I don't work for NASA directly, but for Speedera who delivers their traffic] says ... Slashdot was a drop in the bucket compared to links from mainstream news web sites".
I said it here. The Slashdot load depends on the size of the objects downloaded of course, but a reasonable generalization is that the traffic from a top 10 portal is about five to ten times higher.
Except under normal circumstances the website wants to be indexed. This is an issue about what is the right policy for linking to a website from a mega traffic site, not if they should be indexed or not. If 100 people type that word combo in a day because they are actually interested in the subject and want to learn more, not a problem. But directing the huge userbase of google with one click on an alluring logo banner to the same search page, thats nothing that could be expected or designed for.
I think it is a severe problem which Slashdot and Google don't want to deal with. I have had atleast 2 website I wanted to submit as a slashdot story but didn't because they were private websites without any financial, and without the capacity to handle the load. One inparticular was already under financial strain because of bandwith bills, a slashdoting would have ended it there and then. In that case it is better to leave it for people actually interested in the topic and are willing to find it on their own than to sacrifice the poor website to slashdot.
Looks like Google sent a server Gaga and it went down the Gurgler..
Now if they were TRUELY smart, they'd have used those hits, IP addresses and timestamps as random seed for some internet fractal art! Oops, shouldnt have suggested that - somebody will probably get rich off it.. *shrug*
-- Jim (If it sounds crazy, it probably is!)
-- If at first you don't succeed, lie!
The slippery slope, eh? That sure is, (sarcasm), valid reasoning.
Oh, the Irony.
First Google slashdots a site on recursive fractionated geometry, then the Slashdot editors invite the whole community to rubberneck.
We have a bit of diliema with Google. On one hand, we get high Google rankings for search terms relevant to products we carry. On the other hand, Google does a complete index of our 4,000+ page site every week, and it takes several days.
We're on a wireless Internet connection due to severe lack of affordable Internet out here in the country, and they want to limit us to 30GB per month. I hate to complain to Google because we do get a lot of new customers from Google searches.
...we'll just Slashdot it instead.
So the replacement page reads ... "On the 3rd of February 2004, this page (or rather the page that was here) was swamped by requests and the server subsequentially failed."
I run a website on my home DSL with a store bought router and Linux. Whether that was a redundant T3 or plain ol' DSL, it shouldn't matter: if my poor underpowered server is getting too much traffic due to Slashdot or Google, IT SHOULD NOT EVER ACTUALLY "FAIL"! What, did the Julia ethernet port just start shooting flames? Did the harddrive platters melt? They are describing a software bug!
What in the Julia server people's hardware, router firmware, OS kernel, web server, Java VM, or Java App Server that caused the fault? Whichever vendor is to blame should be identified, taken out back, and given a paddling! (And if the Julia people are running IIS, then, of course, *they* deserve to be paddled because they screwed up on a fractal level.)
In my opinion, if my site got slashdotted, I should hope to return home and see all blinky lights normal (with only my DSL bandwidth jacked up to holy hell).
How do we get these internet infrastructure people (hardware, firmware, and software) to butch up our systems? Is anyone measuring the points of failure on average webservers under extreme load and then working to fix the problems?
Davester
Get Google to buy OSDN and Fark, add a boobies section to /. and unleash the most powerful force the internet has ever seen... Will make mydoom look like a prank on a high school network.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
As they say, sure kicking someone when they are down. And I prefer this googlefight, seeing as how the Julia set site mentions "Googleblatted"
And not what makes them great. The reason Google is good is they return the most relivant results (as determined by their quite efficient engine) for any search, not random, the highest paying, etc. They do the same for things like their banner links.
/.) and you live through it. Doesn't last all that long anyhow. If you choose to host on a home network (as I do with some of my stuff), be prepared that it might get taken out if someone big links you. If you host with a large provider (as I do with other stuff), find one that has a good TOS, with something like a biggest-day exception to your BW limits.
Part of posting content on a totally public, accessible forum like the Internet is teh knowledge that the big boys may take intrest in you at some point. You need to accept and deal with that. I've had servers I own or maintained hit by a lot of people before (from Wired rather than
OMG Google is like the new Slashdot!!! (imagine snotty teenager voice)
Those of us who use a Real Browser don't see the Google main page anymore...
So... in the vain of "slashdotting" a site, should we call it "googling" a site? No, that's already the term you use when searching for a term... it would just end up being confusing. We could just re-appropriate the term "google-whacking"... but that term should stay the same, as well, for simplicity's sake. So then... it is necessary to make a new term. And there's really only one that will do.
That site's been google-spanked.
It is times like these I wish I didn't hate pay-for-click banner ads and had a few myself.
I found the above statement from his web site interesting.
Here is an idea. How about developing some code that only kicks in banner ads when hits go above a certain rate. This could help mitigate the costs of above average traffic, while keeping your site banner free for normal situations.
FYI google bombing is normally the act of a large group of people linking to a site to make it the number 1 search for a particular phrase.
For example "Weapons of mass destruction", "tallentless hack", "miserable failure"
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
... can be found here.
I especially like the logo for Einstein's birthday (see March 14, 2003).
- shadowmatter
This is probably so obvious it's already been mentioned, but how about you (Google) mirror the first page of results you link to from the day's special banner? by default, rather than people having to think to use the google cache. You would of course need to mirror images or other large content. I don't know if there could be any legal problems with this but technicaly it should work and you'd only need to do it for a day.
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
So it's time all the big ISP's to start using transparent squids or whatever, like the small ones do! They should slowdown (or even prevent) the /. - google effect.
Is your ISP forcing you to use a cache????
No sig
Googledotting?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I'm hositing a website for a Janet Jackon fanclub... I had to take it down for a few days after sunday since every person on this world started to query search engines to find "janet jackson superbowl". :)
Suddenly it's not that great anymore if you have a high ranking on google and other search engines...
ohwell... since sunday we've probably become a "adult oriented" site anyway (the way americans see it). I'm even starting to get personal mails from people offering me free adult hosting
Ricardo.
Reading Slashdot?