The Google Phantom

The Google Phantom

Last weekend the internet world was shocked and stunned as Google completely disappeared from the web between 15:51 & 15:52 PDT for reasons unknown, resulting in a 40% drop in overall web traffic throughout the globe. Its staggering how much dominance Google has with regards to web presence, especially when full service was resumed after just 4 minutes. The ramifications felt in that 4 minute period was rumoured to have set Google back a whopping $500,000 (£330,000).

<strong “”>Why?

When questioned about the unexpected blackout Google simply stated We have no comment beyond this; an extremely vague statement from the worlds biggest search engine. Feedback from experts in the digital industry could not shed any more light on the mystery behind the blackout.

Phil Dearson, Head of strategy for Tribal Worldwide, told news readers:

Ive never heard of anything like this before, its completely unprecedented. One or two of Googles services have gone down in the past, like Gmail & Google Apps, but only separately. Its probably a physical infrastructure problem give the size of the outage, but its hard to know at this stage.

Niel McAllister of the website The Register also stated:

Exactly how an operation such as Googles can go dark like that, all at once, is anybodys guess. Whatever details do come to light, however, expect a lot of amazed and nervous discussion in data centre everywhere next week.

<strong “”>What Next?

With the mutterings from Google still quiet and users none the wiser about why this blackout occurred, many industry experts are still unsure as to what the potential ripple effect of this blackout could be for anyone connected to SEO. What seems to be the case is that Google themselves are actively trying to stay very quiet on the issue, causing a great deal of confusion and caution throughout the web. What can we expect to see over the coming weeks and months? Who knows? Google do, but they may well be worried themselves.