1/ August 16, 2013
For 5 minutes, all of Google’s services—including Search, Gmail, YouTube, and Drive—went offline.
Yes, even Google Search was inaccessible. For millions of users worldwide, it felt like the internet itself had stopped working.
For 5 minutes, all of Google’s services—including Search, Gmail, YouTube, and Drive—went offline.
Yes, even Google Search was inaccessible. For millions of users worldwide, it felt like the internet itself had stopped working.
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• Global internet traffic dropped by 40%.
• Productivity ground to a halt for businesses and individuals.
• People started Googling (ironically, on other search engines) to figure out what was going on.
At the time, Google was earning $108 million per day. That’s roughly $500,000 per minute.
In just 5 minutes, the outage likely cost Google $2.5 million.
Search: The world’s largest search engine.
YouTube: Global media hub.
Gmail: Used by businesses and individuals globally.
Drive: Critical for file sharing and collaboration.
When these go down, everything stops.
Google never publicly revealed all the details, but it was attributed to an internal server configuration issue—a mistake on their end.
It wasn’t a hack or external attack, but a simple internal error with massive consequences.
When a company as massive as Google has a hiccup, it sends shockwaves across the globe.
From lost revenue to interrupted communication, the ripple effects were enormous.
It raised questions like:
Are we too reliant on a few tech giants?
What happens if a longer outage occurs?
Should we diversify our tools and services?