Google tenders apology for slow service

Apology tendered
Explaining the cause of yesterday’s blip, Urs Hoelzle, a spokesman for the company said, “An error in one of our systems caused us to direct some of our traffic through Asia. As a result, about 14 per cent of our users experienced slow services or even interruptions.”

He said that the company leaves no stone unturned to ensure that its services are ultra fast and 'always on'. Hoelzle added that it was really upsetting for a company like Google when such a glitch occurs given the fact the high standards the company sets for itself.

The Mountain View, California based company immediately tendered an apology for the sloppy service. Mr Hoelzle, Google's senior vice president of operations said, “We're very sorry that it happened, and you can be sure that we'll be working even harder to make sure that a similar problem won't happen again."

This is not Google’s first brush with such an episode. In February this year, the Gmail service went kaput, leaving millions of people across the globe devoid of the free web-based e-mail service. The restoration happened after a few hours.

Question on reliability
The Google’s snag has once again flared up the whole issue of the reliability of web-based services. The service breakdown instantaneously became a hot topic on the microblogging service Twitter.

This Twitterer takes the cake 'The internet dies without Google. Can't get to my bank website because it's waiting on google-analytics.com”

The mal function also had a small impact on Google-owned sites such as YouTube and some websites using Google ad servers.

Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research noted, “This is bad news for Google's efforts to build up Apps, and to a less extent, Gmail, as critical business tools. If the mighty Google can stumble, then who can be trusted?"