No, the world does not end!! But, if I go by my twitter feed a google outage might be a sign that the world might be coming to an end. BTW, if you did not know Google just had a major outage and pretty much all services were down including the search engine Google.com. Google services are now back atleast for me!!
Wonder what chaos ensues when Google goes down!! The current outage might have been a minor one but lets see what happens when google goes down!
What happens when Google Goes Down?
Chances are you hear it first on Twitter or if you are a software developer like I was in my past avatar, you realize your work comes to a standstill. Bad jokes apart, panic sets in as the digitarti discovers that Google services they rely on so badly is not accessible. Think Google Search, Google Mail / Apps, Google Docs and a range of Google services used widely by people.
Here is a list of things that can happen when Google Goes Down
- Twitter goes down as well. Well, more like folks tweeting "Is Google Down" and others responding with "Yes, Here As Well" set off a chain reaction and the virality of Twitter becomes its Achilles heel and you are hit by a #failwhale. Ouch!
- Coders and IT Managers Get Frantic. It might be self-deprecating but it is true. Thousands of coders working in software companies are hit by a sudden realization that they have lost their coding skills all of a sudden. No google means there is no search and that means there is no easy way to find out what is the solution to the darn bug you are getting.
IT Managers on the other hand being the considerate type they are, realize the obvious hindrance and start thinking of way to push the deliverable deadline. God forbid, if Google goes down for more than a day or two they will have no answer as to why no work is getting done - People discover something called ‘Bing’ exists. Oh yeah! Microsoft’s awesome search engine ‘Bing’ that never seems to give me decent search results, ever. If Google goes out for a full day, expect a press release with the title ‘Bing traffic explodes, Microsoft’s investments paying off’
- Google Announces It’s Time To Materialize Its Evil Plans. Unlikely and scary, but imagine Google decides that the ‘Free’ era is over and announces the outage was an intended move. Anyone who wants to access Google services now needs to give an arm and a leg to be able to use Google’s services or it is over. I cant imagine a headline saying ‘Google’s World Domination Has Begun’
- Robert Scoble Is Not Able to Bash Twitter, On Google+. Well, if you have been active on Google+ you will know what I am talking about. With Google services down, where will Robert Scoble diss twitter and the fact that Twitter is not innovating at all
On a more serious note, there is no denying our dependence on Google. Privacy issues and monopolistic strategy notwithstanding, Google has its users by the hook across a majority of its services. For me, a twitter outage itself makes me realize that something is missing so imagine what Google outage means.
Do share your thoughts on what can happen when Google goes down? How does it affect you.
PS: This was my not-so-good attempt at writing a humor style post. My intention was not to malign any brand or individual
About the developers getting dumb part – On the other hand, demand for good developers who can code without google goes up! Companies giving technical support in hardware wud start earning. Developer networks like OTN, SDN, Javaraunch, etc would suddenly start geting trafic. Well I see it as a great opportunity though :P
No doubt about that :P and the developers getting dumb part was more humor than truth. OTNs of the world are much more helpful than google when it comes to technical search
Yeah true. After reading this article, trying to think of a world with out Google. Though its scary, people will not die of heart attack.
General human tendency is enterprising.
We will think of alternatives. Its not that there are none existing as of now but as we are hooked to Google, we forgot the existance of other search engines. Once we are denied google we think of others.
Google is now the major contributor to the internet. When in need of any thing online Google springs to mind without a thought. Google sure controls a vast part of the internet. If Google goes down the world will surely not end but internet would really lose it allure.
There might be a conspiracy going on to take google down at regular intervals. Fire Sale! :)
Nice post Ankit. Google Talk is still down.
Gtalk has been working for me throughout actually…while other services have been down for me…. so this google down thing is a bit haphazard I must say… Some people like Ankit Agarwal actually did not have any downtime atall I guess
Thanks Pradeep, encouraging considering this is not my writing style :-)
Ankit Agarwal hahahahahahaaha very nice and so true ;-) if this is not your writing style then make it so . Love your this writing style so much ^_^
Abhisshek Das Thanks a ton mate :-)