Last week’s Google downtime created quite a stir among us all, there’s no doubt about that. And one of the most interesting observations/reactions was perhaps made by the Arbor Networks Security Blog which stated that 5% of overall Internet traffic was affected by the Google downtime.
This is quite understandable especially since everyone of us probably use Google search at least a few times daily, check our Gmail accounts every now and then, and of course browse through YouTube whether for leisure or official purposes. Putting all these online activities on Google’s various sites, it’s no wonder that such one and half hour downtime would greatly impact the online populace.
But perhaps what we might be missing is the fact that the Google downtime has also affected sites which are serving online ads from Google AdSense and DoubleClick plus the million of sites which are running Google Analytics. These sites were not spared from the downtime. And so the effect spiraled onto them, contributing to the estimated 5% of the Internet which was hit by the downtime.
5% of the Internet maybe a small percentage, but then we should not dismiss the fact that most of these 5% are business entities, whether group or individually owned which might have lost significant amount of money due to the downtime. And who is accountable for their loss? Unfortunately, not Google.
The point? Should we now start looking into how significant Google has become to the online world were we all do our business in?
As this blog post said:
While still relatively small, it does make Google’s growing significance in the Internet an issue.
