Could you survive without Gmail for six hours?
Google’s cloud crashed on Sunday and was down intermittently for about six hours, affecting Gmail, G Suite, Nest or YouTube, along with Shopify, Snap and Discord. A few hours later these services were up and running again, the company will have to carry out a thorough analysis to identify the possible causes of the problem, compensate those affected and try to prevent it from happening again.
My thoughts on the subject are about the importance of certain services we tend to take for granted, but that like everything else in this world, can fail and does fail sometimes. Such problems are useful in helping us assess what is secondary and what is vital.
When Google services crash, which fortunately does not happen often, companies that use its email or applications for processing documents of all kinds suffer a range of problems, which rarely lasted beyond a few hours, but that can be serious if the crash happens on a business day. Other minor problems may occur with services such as Nest, which manage thermostats in homes, but that can be overcome or endured for a few hours. When Google services go down, the impact is potentially important: suddenly, confronted with no access to a range of activities that have become part of their daily lives, realize the extent to which they are dependent on the company. That said, given the overall…
