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Glitch Has Users Fuming, Google 'Frantic'

Posted by Zonk on from the look-before-you-goog dept.

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.'"

36 of 349 comments (clear)

  1. And In Other News... by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Funny

    Computers break down.

    News at 11.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    1. Re:And In Other News... by elmarkitse · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think you're missing his point. Remotely hosting content opens people up to risks. He's going for the difference between outlook / thunderbird and gmail, and he makes a reasonable point. If my computer breaks down, I'm the fool who didn't back up. When a hosted solution goes down, everyone loses. It's not rocket science deduction he's doing, but it's still relevant to the overall point that Google goes down, service providers are inherently unreliable to some extent, and, as you said, life goes on. Unless it's me, and THEN I'm pissed.

      --
      Mozy, free online backup service
      --
    2. Re:And In Other News... by N0Nick · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's not like Google just lost everyone's email messages from the last 6 months. While I agree with your overall perspective and find the Google Personalized Home's data to be of little critical value (btw - it's not the modules and gadgets developers have been building, it's just.. personalized homepages. the selection and order of widgets across a page...) - you contradict yourself in the above example.

      "Shit happens", that's true. You should always be prepared. You should always backup.
      But... if Google lost everyone's email messages from the last 6 months would it be fair of Google to say "well you should've backed it all up"? After all, what is Gmail if not a purely-online, searchable e-mail archive?
      You can't expect users to be prepared for their archive to be destroyed, right? If Google wants me to manage my e-mail online, they can't expect me to download it all too, just in case.

      The "stream of technical glitches" described in the article, albeit overstressed, is pointing at something that should worry us: If the software market is going towards online services, where data is centralized and 1 server down means 1,000 users down - what strategic steps do we take in order to protect our users and our data?
      --
      Bill Gates Has No Penis.
    3. Re:And In Other News... by krotkruton · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Ok, maybe I'm missing what everyone is saying here. I keep seeing things like "remotely hosting content opens people up to risks" as if locally hosted content doesn't. There are risks regardless of whether information is hosted.

      If my computer breaks down, I'm the fool who didn't back up. When a hosted solution goes down, everyone loses. ...and you're still the fool for not backing it up. If you keep your information in one place, you risk losing it if something happens to that place. I see now, mainly because you pointed it out not because I can understand what the hell that line meant, that his point was that many people can be affected by a crash when information is hosted remotely. However, the article wasn't about the affect it has on the masses but instead seemed to be about the affects it had on individuals. I think that is going down a different road, but either way the initial point is still valid in that it isn't news. I don't think anyone has trouble understanding that if a million people have their information hosted on a website and that website loses the information, then a million people's (peoples'?) information has just been lost.

    4. Re:And In Other News... by arminw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      .....that Google goes down......

      Go back 30 years and substitute "the mainframe goes down". That's how it was before the "personal computer" was invented. Now we'll come full circle. The same system, one central computer and many users, and with it one central point of failure.

      With a personal computer each user has more control over their information, but also more responsibility. There is a lot more "stuff" between my data stored by Google and my keyboard/monitor than the data store on the HD on my computer. A local HD or better still a good RAID storage system is still WAY more reliable than all the technology that needs to work correctly for the Google approach.

      When there is a power outage here, we have UPS/Generator backup. However that is useless for the Internet, since the data multiplexer box about a quarter mile from here doesn't have any sort of backup. It just quits. The old POTS and dial up still work, but that will not sustain any serious work on any remote server. As far as the Internet goes, we're just held incommunicado until the power comes back.

      Until the Internet becomes at LEAST as reliable as the good old fashioned phone, Internet applications will have no appeal to anyone who values reliability and accessibility to their data.

      --
      All theory is gray
  2. So many jokes... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Searching? Have they tried Google?

    It's still in beta!

    Personal Home Page? I knew they should've have used PHP.

  3. So explain again... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    why storing all your data on some company's servers is a good idea?

    1. Re:So explain again... by KillerCow · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So explain again... why storing all your data on some company's servers is a good idea?


      Because managing an email server is not my core concern.

      Say that you business is selling fruitcakes. You make awesome fruitcakes. That's your core. Everything else that you do is not fruitcakes.

      Do you grow the fruit yourself? Nope. You order them from some fruit company.

      Do you make the box that the cake goes in? Nope. You order boxes from a box making company.

      Do you make the machines that run in your plant? Nope. They come from an automation company.

      Do you generate the electricity to run your plant? Nope. The electric company does that.

      Do you sell the cakes directly to consumers? Nope. Retail grocery chains deal with the consumers.

      Do you sell them directly to retailers? Nope. You have a distributor who deals with them.

      Do you transport the cakes yourself? Nope. You contract to a logistics (trucking) company.

      Do you even clean your own toilets? Nope. There's a cleaning service.

      Why should you manage your own email servers? Contract that to a company who's core business is IT infrastructure. They are going to be better at it than you.

      The problem is, Google isn't that good at it. Their core business is search. Everything else is just someone's cool project idea, and not a real product with real resources and real support. It's all just "hey, look at this cool thing with a cool UI" and that's then end of it.
    2. Re:So explain again... by krbvroc1 · · Score: 5, Funny

      So explain again why storing all your data on some company's servers is a good idea? Because using a company like Google who has an unlimited data retention policy there is no chance your data will be lost.

      Oh wait...
    3. Re:So explain again... by ByteofK · · Score: 5, Funny

      Do you sell the cakes directly to consumers? Nope. Retail grocery chains deal with the consumers. What... would you say... ya do here?
    4. Re:So explain again... by syousef · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If I sell fruit cakes and my suppliers can't supply fruit, it quickly becomes my problem. Often with fruit suppliers, you can go to someone else to supply the fruit which is a commodity - ie you can replace it with the equivalent without missing a beat. Likewise with every other example you put up. There are other companies that will supply people to clean your toilets or transport your good. Your data on the other hand is not a commodity.

      You often can't go to a different supplier because computer services tend towards monopolies. Find me a decent alternative to Google for searching. Find me another free/ad based web usenet provider that only requires port 80. For that reason keeping your email store with a 3rd party that's more than a little stupid. An alternative company can't sell you a new copy. Trusting a company in that way is crazy. It's not quite as high a level of trust as you're forced to place in your doctor or taxi driver, because there your life is at stake. However that's why these industries are heavily regulated. The internet...well good luck settling that issue in court and if your data just happens to be destroyed in the meantime, whooopsie it slipped.

      --
      These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
  4. Hmm by geek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Hmm by vux984 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      At least my desktop applications have backups.
      I don't have to rely on 'frantic google engineers scrambling to find a fix'. I know absolutely that my data can be recovered.

      I backup my data based on how valuable it is to me.

      How valuable is your data to google? I know they try, and they even do a pretty dammed good job, but at the end of the day, you aren't even really their customer -- you are their product.

      Like a farmer raising chickens; they want them strong, well fed, happy, healthy, content, disease free, and they take steps to ensure they stay that way. But at the end of the day, they aren't really in it for the chicken's welfare.

    2. Re:Hmm by geek · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Every google app has the option of downloading a local backup, whether its pop mail via gmail or downloading your docs and spread sheets from google docs. You are responsible for your own data, period. If it's that critical for you, don't put it online. It's a free service, period. If you paid for it I'd see that argument as relevent, however, you don't.

    3. Re:Hmm by Breakfast+Pants · · Score: 5, Informative

      "Every google app has the option of downloading a local backup". Not the personalized pages.

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      WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
  5. Step away from the web by Timesprout · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Many who use Google's Personalized Home Page feature - yours truly included - are trembling in fear today over the prospect of losing all of their carefully crafted settings to a bug that has Google engineers "frantic" to find a fix.
    You might want to think about getting out a bit more if loosing a few settings has you 'trembling in fear'.
    --
    Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
    What truth?
    There is no dupe
    1. Re:Step away from the web by Qzukk · · Score: 4, Insightful

      the risks of relying on hosted applications providers

      And of course, a desktop application would NEVER have a bug that caused you to lose information or settings.

      --
      If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
    2. Re:Step away from the web by AK+Marc · · Score: 5, Funny

      losing. How frigging hard is it to type LOSING instead of LOOSING?

      I don't know, you managed to misspell "fucking." How hard was that for you?

      --
      Learn to love Alaska
  6. Terminator... by A+Pressbutton · · Score: 4, Funny

    wasn't the first sign of skynet a loss of performance and outages in large distributed computing networks?

  7. Re:hmmmmm by slamb · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is just basic CYA. If they promise that the data will come back, then they're legally obligated to restore it.

    Under what law? IANAL, but I believe making a hopeful statement in a press release is rather different than signing a legal contract. I think it would be poor public relations to overpromise and underdeliver, but illegal? That sounds crazy.

  8. huge problem for me by Gospodin · · Score: 4, Funny

    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...
    1. Re:huge problem for me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      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.

      The above comment is proof positive that MBA's post at Slashdot.

  9. Because... by KingSkippus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Maybe because over the course of a few months or years, Google's uptime is a lot higher than my company's servers?

    1. Re:Because... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Maybe your company should invest in some decent infrastructure. Trust me, it isn't as expensive as you'd expect.

      I worked IT at a rather large firm several years back. During one of my interviews they bragged about their uptime. They had production mail servers that'd been up for 3 years. I thought they were full of shit. That was, until they hired me and I actually got to see these systems.

      Their entire email infrastructure was run off of four PCs. Two were in one city, and two were in a branch office in another major city on the other side of the country. The two I worked with ran BSD/OS, and had in fact been up for 3 years when I started. Of the other two at the other office, one ran FreeBSD, and the other ran NetBSD. When I left there, the BSD/OS server had been up for about 4.5 years, the FreeBSD server for just over 3 years, and the NetBSD server for just under 3 years. They kept their systems powered during outages using the typical battery backups you find at a Circuit City.

      They'd probably set up those systems for no more than $10,000, including hardware, BSD/OS, the battery backups, and the installation. When you consider the millions upon millions of dollars those systems helped bring in, it's really amazing that they could do so much with what was essentially so very little.

      There is no reason why your company can't have servers with uptimes approaching five years, if it's that important to you. And it can probably be done for a very minimal initial cost, and even then with minimal upkeep.

  10. Refund by kbob88 · · Score: 5, Funny

    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...

    1. Re:Refund by R3d+M3rcury · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I gotta admit, this is a tricky call.

      Suppose you have a couch on your lawn. You figure you'll hire somebody to come move it to the dump, but your neighbor says, "Heck, I got a couple of strong boys. I'll move it for free tonight." Next morning, the couch is still there. A few days later, you mention it to the neighbor. "Sure, I'll get the boys to do it tonight. No problem!" Next day, it's still there. It rained that night and the couch is now soaked through. You can't mow the lawn because there's this couch in the way. The in-laws are coming over tomorrow and you'd rather not have this big ol' couch sitting right smack dab in the middle of the lawn. But the neighbor says, "Hey, don't worry. My boys'll be over to take it away."

      Sure, it's not costing you anything. But how annoying is it? And considering this problem, would you really trust your neighbor to, say, feed your dog while you were away on vacation?

      So some of this is perception. Google says, "trust us with your data." And when something goes wrong, they'll try to get it back? They have to show me that they can get it back before I'll trust them with my important data.

  11. Fuming? by mashuren · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  12. Re:That's the trade-off... by Hennell · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This exactly the reason I don't believe all these reports that Google's (Or other) online apps will take over from local software. Sure online word processing can be handy, but if the network breaks, or their servers do you've got no comeback. If Gmail broke tomorrow and everyone lost all their e-mails (and logins to websites etc) there would be mass problems and loads of people would be really annoyed. But there wouldn't be much we could do about it, I'm sure in the eula we're not allowed to sue for lost data etc because that would be crazy if everyone did. At least if its local you have someone to blame/punch....
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    Contronyms: for people who sanction opposites
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  13. server based approach is inherently flawed by passionfruit · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:server based approach is inherently flawed by cmburns69 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If there were a peer-to-peer e-commerce model, people would feel more secure and less dependent on others for commerce.


      That's just about the scariest thing I've heard in a long time! When I'm shopping on eBay, at least I have some protections against fraud. Dealing with any random give-me-your-card-number joe on the internet is not my idea of "secure".

      --
      Online Starcraft RPG? At
      Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
  14. Re:hmmmmm by Breakfast+Pants · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you promise that something will happen, without knowing for sure that it will happen, that's fraud That is not the definition of fraud AT ALL. If it were, churches all across the nation would get nailed on fraud charges every Sunday.
    --

    --

    WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
  15. Oh dear me no. by rantingkitten · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
  16. Re:That's the trade-off... by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This exactly the reason I don't believe all these reports that Google's (Or other) online apps will take over from local software. Sure online word processing can be handy, but if the network breaks, or their servers do you've got no comeback.

    And this is just lost data, which is easily fixed in any useful system via a sensible back-up policy.

    Wait until the first time a big web-based app doesn't mass-erase data, it mass-leaks it. As businesses stupid enough to trust their confidential documents to external systems watch their competitors get all their trade secrets for free, and consumers stupid enough to trust on-line systems to hold their credit card details securely for extended periods (I'm looking at you, Amazon) watch all their cards get defrauded, then people will realise that most web apps run by third party services simply don't offer any real advantage for anyone except lazy administrators.

    --
    If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
  17. beta.Google? by Heembo · · Score: 5, Funny

    I thought all of Google was still in Beta?

    --
    Horns are really just a broken halo.
    1. Re:beta.Google? by MBraynard · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes, exactly. That is NOT funny but insightful. Almost all of these services are in beta. What the hell are you doing using Gmail for your corporate services?

  18. Re:That's the trade-off... by lottameez · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yeah, and bringing 4oz of shampoo on an airplane is a threat to aviation security. And not having my own power generator could result in a lot of spoiled food in the fridge. And using city water could be deadly if it's not filtered properly. And not fixing my own car could cause an accident. Shall I go on? Ok. And not growing my own food means that I have to trust McDonald's not to kill me. And taking Tylenol could kill me (it's happened before you know). And ....etc etc etc.

    It's risk. When that happens (not if), somebody will get sued, the problems will get fixed, and we'll move on. The economics of the hosted model are too compelling to cause it to go away.

    --
    Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.