Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Google Drive Faces Outage, Users Report [Update] (google.com)

Posted by msmash on from the outage-report dept.

Numerous Slashdot readers are reporting that they are facing issues access Google Drive, the productivity suite from the Mountain View-based company. Google's dashboard confirms that Drive is facing outage. Third-party web monitoring tool DownDetector also reports thousands of similar complaints from users. The company said, "Google Drive service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users in the near future. Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change. Google Drive is not loading files and results in a failures for a subset of users."

Update: 09/07 17:13 GMT: Google says it has resolved the issue.

38 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. Awww by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Funny

    Google's having a cloudy day; or should I say, non-cloudy?

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
    1. Re:Awww by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      It's working fine for me. If it was ever down, it wasn't for long.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  2. Drive Down by pdfsmail · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Confirmed,

    Went to google drive and I can see the interface, but not files, just continuously loads. Although I can access files in my Quick Access area.
    Glad I back this up locally! Hopefully I wont lose Gigs of files like the last time I had an issue with them (a couple years ago).

    1. Re:Drive Down by DogDude · · Score: 1

      Hopefully I wont lose Gigs of files like the last time I had an issue with them (a couple years ago).

      Why THE FUCK would you use a file sharing service that has lost data for you in the past? That seems kinda' insane.

      --
      I don't respond to AC's.
    2. Re:Drive Down by tomhath · · Score: 3, Funny

      Hey, the product is only in Beta. Go easy on him.

    3. Re:Drive Down by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Because for many people it is just an 'sharing' product.
      Everything that is there is on the computer, too!
      And: for many people there are no alternatives anyway, hont: Chrome Book.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  3. The root cause, of course... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Is that their workforce is not diverse enough.

    1. Re:The root cause, of course... by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That could be the case. Google like to hire a large subset of like minded people.
      Someone with a different set of experience and life lessons, may had seen this problem beforehand and been able to fix it. Vs Google hiring kids who pass the IQ tests and are excited about the new and cool. Who just doesn't realize that there is always a single point of failure that needs to be addressed.

      I know at my work environment which is very diverse, they are many different approaches to problems that allows us to handle things more thoroughly.
      The young guy has fresh new ideas to problems, the older guy has experience to know where the problems are to the ideas, and can point out that this new idea was already tried. The person with more experience with dealing with politics, can determine if the idea will get past management or not. Then there is a person who will document everything.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    2. Re:The root cause, of course... by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Hhahaha funny enough the only person I know who works for Google, works in the Google Drive division and is female.

      Make of that anecdote what you will :-)

      *Kidding she's a walking genius.

    3. Re:The root cause, of course... by Rockoon · · Score: 1

      Its not male vs female that is at issue. Its conservative vs liberal.

      You hire liberals to innovate, and conservatives to maintain the day to day, If you make the conservatives feel unwelcome, ostracize them, fire them if they speak out, and so on... well... even what little conservatives you have wont be performing at top efficiency even if they wanted to, and they might not want to (they might want to watch it all burn.)

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    4. Re:The root cause, of course... by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      Medical Doctors and Nurses are often well trained at diagnosing problems.
      The artist may be able to look at the problem with a different angle to prevent people from starting at the same line of code.
      A tribal leader would have leadership experience to direct the right people and right number to help solve the problem

      If the company hires similar people chances are they will be staring at the wrong line of code or both trying to fix it with the same approach.

      Why would a Nurse or an Artist wouldn't be a White guy?

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  4. What a coincidence! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    My files stored locally on my external drive are also not available!

    Just kidding. Store your own damn files on your own damn hardware, fools.

    1. Re:What a coincidence! by WilliamGeorge · · Score: 1

      Why not do both? Then if your external drive dies, or you are not at home / the office with it, or whatever... you have multiple copies of your data in multiple physical locations. That is how it should be done :)

      --
      William George
    2. Re:What a coincidence! by WilliamGeorge · · Score: 1

      Anything that is sensitive should be encrypted first, of course. Depends on what you are storing.

      --
      William George
    3. Re:What a coincidence! by JohnFen · · Score: 2

      In this day and age of Big Data analytics, there is no longer any such thing as data that is not sensitive. Even the most trivial of information, combined with other trivial information, can add up to a serious intrusion.

      If you really must keep data in the cloud, it should all be encrypted (by you, not the cloud), no matter how insignificant that data may seem.

    4. Re:What a coincidence! by JohnFen · · Score: 2

      Hmmm, it's as if there is a subset of people who think that it's impossible to have down time or lose data if you use your own hardware and backup strategy...

      Of course it's not impossible. However, it's also not that hard to meet the same uptime targets as the cloud providers. Also, if it's all on your hardware, then it can be easier to recover from the problem.

      It sucks when a major host goes down, because it affects many at once.

      No. It sucks because when it happens, the users are 100% powerless to do anything about it.

      For many organizations, it's virtually guaranteed that Google or other hosts will do a better job than a roll your own solution.

      I would argue that this isn't true for any organization. A cloud host's advantage is not that they can do a better job than you, it's that they'll save you time and money. A big part of what you sacrifice for that convenience is control and the ability to correct the inevitable problems.

      Whether or not that's worth it depends on your (or your business') particular cost/benefit formula.

    5. Re:What a coincidence! by WilliamGeorge · · Score: 1

      Sure, you could keep your master copies on a home network and open ports for remote access... but even more easily you could use Google Drive, and not have to worry about potentially opening holes in your home network. Then, use Google Drive's various platform apps to keep local backups of the data on your Drive - and keep an additional periodic backup externally, so that if you accidentally change or delete something that propagates to the various local versions of Drive you can still go back and get an older copy.

      That is what I do, at least, and it has kept my data both easily accessible and secure. I also encrypt the sensitive stuff on my own before it gets put on Google Drive.

      --
      William George
    6. Re:What a coincidence! by JohnFen · · Score: 1

      I don't think that we're disagreeing as much as you imply.

      For small to medium size businesses? It's not as easy as you imply.

      It depends on how many 9s you need. For most small and medium businesses, 4 or 5 nines (plus adequate backups) are more than sufficient. You can achieve that with a couple of high-quality RAIDs that are geographically separated (particularly if you park them in a third party server farm that provides things like UPS).

      It's virtually impossible to do cost effectively.

      I disagree with the "virtually impossible" part. But, ignoring that, here is where we aren't really disagreeing that much: doing this yourself (on a small scale, anyway) is clearly more expensive than farming it out. "Cost effective" is a relative term, though, which is why I mentioned "cost/benefit calculations". What's not cost effective for one business may be cost effective for another, even if the businesses are the same size.

      screwed because you tried to roll your own solution that failed because you lacked the expertise and/or financial capability to build something with the necessary durability.

      Agreed. I was not recommending that anyone do this themselves if they don't have, or can't afford, the expertise.

      I did IT support for small businesses for several years (decades ago), and the frequency in which businesses lost critical data because the secretary never changed the tape in the tape drive but they didn't know that until the 1 hard drive in the cobbled together server stashed in the coat closet went kaput is... horrifying.

      But this is not an argument against what I was saying. You are talking about businesses running their IT with a high degree of incompetency. Nothing protects against incompetency.

      And I was hardly suggesting that everyone should roll their own (I really thought I'd put enough qualifiers in to make that clear, but I guess not). What I was saying is that the notion that you can't do this yourself in a competent fashion is nonsense.

      Whether or not it's worth it to you to do this yourself is a different issue. In some cases, it is. In others, it's not. It all depends on your particular situation.

    7. Re:What a coincidence! by JohnFen · · Score: 1

      (RAID is not a backup!)

      I never said otherwise. I was talking about live reliability, not backups.

      And, of course, if your RAID setups are in a third party server farm, you're in the same boat as people using google/aws/etc.

      Not at all. If I have hardware sitting in a farm, and the farm goes down, I can still physically go there and retrieve my hard drives.

      is far beyond the financial capabilities of the vast majority of small businesses and even many medium size businesses.

      Well, we'll have to agree to disagree on this. I manage it, and I'm not wealthy.

      The hate on "the cloud" (the actual service, not the term) for its imperfections is just as irrational as hating on FedEx/UPS/USPS for their imperfections.

      In a sense, yes. In another sense, it's understandable since cloud providers tend to sell themselves as being without such imperfections.

      I never said it was impossible.

      Then why are we debating? Since my only assertion was that it's possible and for some, the best option.

      I don't "hate" on cloud services as a concept, by the way. My problem is twofold. First, I think that the way that cloudy companies market themselves is deceptive, and this "you can't do it as well as us" line is one of the deceptive sales tactics.

      Second, I think that the way people are using the cloud is dangerous. They just ship their data off without thinking this stuff through, and then trust the companies entirely for security and reliability. Disaster looms down that path, sooner or later.

      "The cloud" is, as you noted, nothing new at all. It used to be the way all computing was done. However, everyone seems to have forgotten that there are very real tradeoffs involved. The downsides of it are not insignificant -- which is why everyone rejoiced when microcomputers reduced the need for heavy iron.

    8. Re:What a coincidence! by sjames · · Score: 1

      RAID is not in itself a backup, but a second raid off site certainly can be.

  5. News? by Joviex · · Score: 1

    Downdetector status is now news? wow, this place has finally sailed.

    1. Re:News? by Joviex · · Score: 1

      The news element isn't that a site is down, it's that freakin' *Google* is down. If you've heard of them, you might clue in as to *why* it's news.

      Well, I feel sorry for you, anonymous coward.

      Its not news.

      Google is, in fact, NOT down.

      Just a single service, from over 100+ online ones.

      You will have to watch your porn collection later.

  6. Re:Ouch by jellomizer · · Score: 1

    99.99% uptime 365 allows for almost 9 hours every year. A full business day of work.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  7. Re:Ouch by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

    Well, my new Chromebook's uptime is... huh, it browses Drive files just fine.

    --
    Support my political activism on Patreon.
  8. Re:Ouch by jellomizer · · Score: 1

    .9 hours

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  9. Re:Ouch by Swave+An+deBwoner · · Score: 3, Funny

    Google is 10 times better than any other 99.99% uptime service, so 9 hours.

  10. 99.99% uptime = 0.01% downtime by ErichTheRed · · Score: 1

    The problem with great SLAs is that if you really want your data all the time, you have to plan for it and have another copy somewhere that isn't being affected by the bad day that your primary provider is having...no matter how remote the chance. Enterprise IT folks deal with this all the time, balancing need for always-on vs. the cost to make that happen.

    Some outages are worse than others too. Cloud providers can have situations where they'll lose access to small portions of their environment, but when you're talking about something wrong with the -entire- software-defined storage soup that those Google Drive URLs feed into....bad day all around.

  11. Re:Ouch by msauve · · Score: 1

    It's like the Sprint commercial saying there's a 1% difference in reliability between them and Verizon. A 1% difference is over 3.6 days!

    --
    "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
  12. An outage or... by BronsCon · · Score: 5, Funny

    Is this really an outage, or do a bunch of people just owe them 12 cents?

    --
    APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
  13. RIAA MPAA by hunter44102 · · Score: 1

    Don't worry, it's the music and movie industry looking for torrents to remove

  14. Too bad, you're not the customer by sremick · · Score: 2

    Well, looks like people are getting their money's worth for Google Drive.

    Remember: if something is free, you're not the customer... you're the product. Google doesn't give a flying fuck about you and your files beyond their ability to mine them for data that they can monetize by selling your privacy away to the highest bidder. They don't care if you lose data... tomorrow there'll be a 1000 new people to take your place even if you actually follow through with your empty threat to boycott them forever more.

    The "cloud" is a joke. All it is is you storing YOUR files on someone ELSE'S computers... someone else who doesn't have one one-millionth of the vested interest in your files that you do, even if you DO opt for one of the pay cloud services. If your data is important to you, why would you pay a premium for some stranger who couldn't care less about your files to take ownership and responsibility for their care? Either step up and take responsibility for your own shit, or stop whining.

    1. Re:Too bad, you're not the customer by swillden · · Score: 2

      Google doesn't give a flying fuck about you and your files beyond their ability to mine them for data that they can monetize by selling your privacy away to the highest bidder.

      Two errors in the above:

      First, Google doesn't data mine Drive files, unless the file in question is marked publicly-accessible by the user.

      Actually, I doubt they mine even public docs for information about the doc owner; my guess that the terms of service include that escape hatch for public docs because they get added to the search index, and so searches may turn them up with ads alongside which would constitute a "marketing or promotional campaign", in the words of the ToS.

      Second, Google doesn't sell user data, even for products that are advertising-based. Google makes money by using the data to target ads, not by selling the data to advertisers (or anyone else).

      Remember: if something is free, you're not the customer... you're the product.

      Often true, but many Drive users are paying customers. And the non-paying users are still customers, just customers getting the free loss leader in hopes of convincing them to buy.

      The "cloud" is a joke. All it is is you storing YOUR files on someone ELSE'S computers... someone else who doesn't have one one-millionth of the vested interest in your files that you do, even if you DO opt for one of the pay cloud services.

      Actually, I'd say that a cloud provider who makes billions on providing cloud services has a great vested interest in keeping your files safe and available. Oh, not so much about your files specifically, but the odds that just yours would get lost are negligible. If they were to lose data, it would hit lots of users... and that could easily cost them billions.

      In particular, Google makes lots of money from enterprise users of Drive, Docs, etc. You can bet they're not going to jeopardize that. And, no, a few hours outage once per year or so isn't that big of a deal. That's less downtime than almost any self-hosted large-scale solution will achieve.

      Either step up and take responsibility for your own shit, or stop whining.

      I take responsibility for my own data, which is why I have a copy of it in Google Drive. Also, another copy on my desktop, one on my laptop and one on my wife's laptop. I used to run my own home file server, with RAID6 plus regular backups, and I dabbled for a while with automatic offset backups using Tahoe LAFS and a backup tool that I wrote. Then I wised up and started doing my offsite backups with a cloud provider and keeping a copy on each machine I use regularly. The result is safer, more reliable and much, much less work.

      (Disclaimer/Disclosure: I work for Google. My relationship with Drive, however, is just that of a satisfied user.)

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  15. Face Outage? by tsqr · · Score: 1

    I've read TFS and TFA, and I still don't know what a "face outage" is, or how Google drives it.

  16. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  17. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  18. Re:Ouch by lifeisshort · · Score: 1

    52 minutes and 56 seconds actually.

  19. Re:Ouch by kristofer.vesi · · Score: 1

    Tough I think the outage is not worldwide and may be fixed, it may only effect some accounts, my drive works fine too, no problems except the bug, what interupts shutdown... In a nutshell: don't download sync drive on windows, if you don't really need it, to get rid of the bug you need to reinstall windows. They haven't fixed it in 2+ years...

  20. Re:Ouch by thebullshitpatrol · · Score: 1

    or a small corner of Montana that 99% of the population will never go to.

    bad comparison. no points in time during your lifetime are optional.