Google Outages: The Logic of a Quasi Monopoly
August 24, 2022
I read “Google Search Goes Down Around the World, Chaos Ensues.” In today’s world, I am not certain that a quasi monopoly’s technical shortcomings cause chaos. Anger, frustration, and confusion, yes. Chaos already exists in a number of high profile activities; for example, air plane luggage handling, medicines which don’t work as advertised on cable TV, and self driving vehicles. The write up states about one outage:
Google Search went down in dozens of countries. Other Google services, like Google Maps, were affected too.
Then:
The outage followed an “electrical incident” earlier in the day at a Google data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa, according to local media and SFGate. The incident critically injured three electricians around midday Iowa time. One person was flown to a nearby hospital and the other two were transported by ambulance.
Now here is the sentence which made the logic of quasi monopolies clear to me and probably no one else in the world, including the 150,000 or so Googlers laboring in the vineyards of truth and advertising revenue:
A Google spokesperson, however, told CNET that the two incidents were unrelated.
Er, one company is the glue that connects the two events. Thus, in my opinion, the one company has failed twice and the events are related: Corporate DNA does not infuse just the Mountain View folks. Everyone has the chemical magic if not the technical skills to demonstrate that technical debt is now too burdensome to address in an effective way. Focus, right?
Stephen E Arnold, August 24, 2022
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