Can We Continue to Trust Google?
Posted by jonathan at 1:32pm EST on 03/09/2009
Google offers a wide variety of services. Gmail, Search, online office collaboration, and a number of other services that are commonly used by millions of people around the world.
Is it becoming to much for Google to handle? Despite having 20,000+ employees still, even after the “let goes” of 10,000 temporary employees, Google is still having service stability issues.
First, it flooded the web news of how Google accidentally shared some of your Google Docs without your knowledge. Then shortly after, AdSense wasn’t serving it’s purpose and displayed non-relevant ads. Human error? Service instability?
Let’s keep going. How about Gmail downtime. The Google Reader outage back in 2007. And a Blogger outage in 2006.
I’m not ever going to say that software is perfect and completely bug-free, nor that the human element adds any perfection to it, but these outages should make you take a step back and look at your options for what is available to you. Is self-hosted the way to go? Maybe an find an alternative to Google, like Zoho.
polyGeek
Mar 9th, 2009
I believe that as we become more connected we need to adapt an attitude that not everything is going to work all the time and mistakes happen. We all expect our car should start every time but we know it won’t. It’s going to let us down eventually. The prepared person has a neighbor who can take them to work/school or knows the bus schedule, etc.
If something is vital to you then have alternatives and expect to use them from time to time.
Jonathan Dingman
Mar 9th, 2009
I completely agree. Be a prepared person. For example, if Gmail goes down, make sure you have an IMAP backup or have offline access using Google Gears. If Calendar goes down, make sure you have offline access or have your calendar synced up to another service.
Ideas like that as backup solutions.
Great comment poly, thanks.
polyGeek
Mar 9th, 2009
I could see someone, like you, writing a whole suite of articles on how to best backup and/or work with online services when they are down. I think that with Gears and AIR apps there will be many more options in the near future.
Jonathan Dingman
Mar 9th, 2009
That’s a really good idea, I just might do that. Thanks Poly!
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