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Glitch Has Users Fuming, Google 'Frantic'
netbuzz writes "A problem with Google's Personalized Home Page feature has apparently cost a lot of users their carefully crafted doors to the Internet. And Google, which says it is frantically searching for a fix, also acknowledges that it is not sure if it will be able to recover the lost settings. 'The problem is the latest in what seems a regular stream of technical glitches and availability problems affecting Google's online services. In the past six months, Google services like Blogger, Gmail and Google Apps have all experienced significant technical issues that have left users fuming. The problems highlight one of the risks of relying on hosted applications providers, which offer to house software and its data for individuals and organizations. Google is one of the biggest cheerleaders for this software provisioning model, which many see as a viable option to the traditional approach of having users install applications on their own PCs and servers.'"
Computers break down.
News at 11.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Searching? Have they tried Google?
It's still in beta!
Personal Home Page? I knew they should've have used PHP.
... for not having to manage, install or roll-out this software. It saves time when setting up, but that time is possible then transferred to when the thing breaks. Not that in-house software breaks, but I guess at least then it's up to you to fix it, as opposed to some guys in a fancy building half-way around the world.
why storing all your data on some company's servers is a good idea?
So 3 different apps have 1 hiccup each over the course of 6 months. If only my desktop applications were so reliable. I can't even count how many paragraphs in Word I've lost due to crashes, or how many settings I've lost in Gnome from random bugs. I don't see what the fuss is, it's still a matter of "shit happens" only Google seems to be rather responsive about it all.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
That's what they said when gmail mail was disappearing. All of the mail (IIRC) was recovered.
This is just basic CYA. If they promise that the data will come back, then they're legally obligated to restore it.
Most companies just would have not issued any kind of statement until they already knew what the problem was.
This announcement is a GOOD THING(tm).
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
wasn't the first sign of skynet a loss of performance and outages in large distributed computing networks?
And don't count your chickens before they hatch.
Google has never made any binding promises about the availability of many of its services or the data that users entrust to them. If Google loses all your email, tough noogies. They are not accountable. Stop pretending that they are.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Forget losing my data, I'm using the "Seasonal" theme on my Google homepage and it's still showing snow-covered hills and a snowman. It knows from my zip code that I do not live in Siberia or even Buffalo. How is this seasonal!? I think Google should drop everything else and get on this one pronto.
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
Maybe because over the course of a few months or years, Google's uptime is a lot higher than my company's servers?
not even your email it getting your blood pressure up, you need to get some professional help.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Jeez, what a screwup! You'd think that Google would offer to refund affected users their license and subscription fees for the service! I mean if I paid good money for something like that and they messed it up, I'd be hopping mad. I'd take my business to all those other sites that offer all those cool Ajax apps along with the biggest search engine in the world. Not like I was getting something for free or anything!
Oh wait a minute...
The problems highlight one of the risks of relying on hosted applications providers, which offer to house software and its data for individuals and organizations.
How is that a problem? Whether you rely on someone else's computer or your own, there's just as much risk -- it just happens to be in a different place. If anything I'd like to believe that Google's network of servers is much more reliable than my home PC.
Just how much do people have invested here? I haven't experienced the glitch yet, but if I did it would take me all of five minutes to set up my settings the way I want them again. It really doesn't strike me as being as big a deal as everyone says it is. I mean, all of the services Google offers are absolutely free. Does anyone really have any right to complain about something they're getting for free? Well, of course they have the right, let me rephrase that: people shouldn't complain about stuff that they get for free. :P
An object at rest cannot be stopped.
I had enough of that in high school, thanks. Egh.
Are these the same users who don't backup their computers at home, the same users who save their work on the local drive at work which gets wiped rather than their network drive. People who expect IT to just magically work forever without any problems ever and without any effort on their part? And in this case for free?
Sorry, but I have no sympathy for them.
Gmail is free. So is Hotmail and Yahoo. But Gmail is currently the most convenient and reliable. Google invests millions in making the system work as well as it does. Much better and reliably then most companies IT departments out there manage to do. And people still complain?
If you don't like it, why don't you run your friggin' own mail server and backup racks and see how well you manage! And try doing that on a zero budjet...
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
What many of us don't realize is the fact that depending on a large service provider such as Google for applictions provision may actually leave us quite vulnerable. What we are doing is putting all our eggs in one basket. If Google goes down, your business processes crash with it. eBay lost a lot in revenues when its servers crashed a few years ago. If there were a peer-to-peer e-commerce model, people would feel more secure and less dependent on others for commerce. Imagine storing all your information on your own hard-drive, and selling products to others WITHOUT paying ebay fees! Ultimate empowerment implies physical independence. Until that happens, we are all vulnerable.
Now here's one iPoddy site! iPod Range
From my perspective as an individual Google services are more reliable than any of my desktop apps. I think I've had about 2 times where I couldn't log in and check my email. I waited five minutes and was able to check it without any issues. From all I've read I haven't heard of outages much more than a few minutes so far. Lost data sometimes happens when working online, but that happens with desktop apps as well. I don't really see a drawback on an individual perspective. It's on a group perspective that internet apps like Google's services are really noticed. If the service goes down it isn't just affecting you, it's affecting everyone that uses it. Besides that though there really isn't a downside to using this free service beyone that. It's a wierd dualistic view that wouldn't always work from a business perspective, but for personal home use Google offers unsurpassed features per dollar.
So some random guy posts some random blog trying to stir up controversy and the people of Slashdot are supposed to pay attention?
So people are "fuming" that their personalized news page and other crap, which is free, and mostly in beta, had a minor glitch and now they'll have to spend two minutes setting up their precious, precious settings again. My, what a catastrophe.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
In Soviet America, Google breaks YOU!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Hey can we mod the summary as -1 Troll?
[17] Leary, T., White, C., Wood, P. R., Bhabha, W. D., and Wirth, N. Lambda calculus considered harmful. In Proceedings
Oh, right.
"but it's beta...."
And it's a free service too, isn't it?
Chicken fried butter sticks? Do
I'd agree with you if Google's personal homepage was just a set of links etc and other basic HTML+CSS content. However, as an intermediate web developer, even I would have to take quite some time to develop the applets they offer by myself, like learning how to interface with the Gmail account, RSS feeds, and weather web services. It's really not newbie friendly to make on your own.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Quote: "Just because a company is large does not mean it's trying to steal your soul."
Google, in my opinion, is the "large company trying to steal my soul." Why were Gmail accounts by invite only for so long - and then by text message? Simple: paper trail to track who users are. I view Microsoft as too big and outdated to be smart enough to figure out how to abuse users' privacy concerns. Google is the new big brother - I'm just wondering how long it will be until the general public comes to realize that all of Google's amazingly wonderful and free services come at a steep price: Google owning a piece of your soul.
In Microsoft's case in particular, their monopoly means that they have an extra responsibility not to screw up, because the "whole world" depends on them. Of course, Microsoft doesn't accept that, but many people believe they should. Google may have reached that point for some features, like search, but even mail is only recently out of beta and open for general signup without an invite or restrictions. But the current problem doesn't affect either search or mail.The comparison in the parent post, ignoring salient details and jumping to conclusions without much consideration, would be right at home on Bill O'Reilly! Perhaps you've found your true home!
Back in the day, when users were confined to terminals with access to the mainframe at the whim of the sysop, PCs with their own software were supposed to set us free from those shackles. Free to develop their own creativity. Free from timesharing computer resources. Free from someone else having access to every file, every preference, every .conf. They threw a big hammer through Big Brother's face during the Super Bowl and everything.
So what's the attraction to going backwards to putting Big Brother in charge again? Having your data on someone else's server, with its security only as good as the least honest person with access to the server? Having no choice over the software you use every day and being dependent on the choices, preference s and whims of the person running the server ("What? You preferred Emacs? Sorry, now you're using vi.")? Having to look at ads all day long so that you don't have to pay for software?
All these things that are supposed to be so much hipper like IMAP and googlapps just give your control over your data to someone else blindly on faith that they are trustworthy. What a crock!
They are called typos. They happen. If you want mod points for OT nit-picking at least say something funny. There should be a rule. I'm mean if I'm going to waste my time at work, throw me a bone.
Quack, quack.
A widely known "fact"? "Safe to say"? Linking to some bloggers is now evidence of said "fact"?? You make value judgments based on how many articles you found in technorati? No wonder you posted as AC.
I've been around long enough to remember an early version of MS-Word that had a glitch that sometimes turned all of its content into nice little asterisks. Completely unrecoverable. I had to wait several months to get a version that didn't have that particular little feature. With a webapp it would've at least been fixed and released within days of discovery FOR ALL USERS with no patches or installs required.
My company has switched some key applications from desktop to webtop and we couldn't be happier. Overall downtime is considerably less than the equivalent desktop app and it doesn't require any of my IT staff to manage.
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
I thought all of Google was still in Beta?
Horns are really just a broken halo.