Google Suffers Another Embarassing Service Disruption

Google Inc. (GOOG) suffered another embarrassment when a technical glitch rendered the Internet search company's main page, mail service and news site sluggish or unavailable to millions of people worldwide for about an hour Thursday morning.
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The disruption rippled across the Internet, sparking frustration among many and causing others to ponder their increasing reliance on the world most widely used Web property.

The service problem follows similar snafus for the Mountain View, Calif.-based company that have affected businesses and consumers in recent months and raised questions about the reliability of Web-based software. In February, Google mail users around the world were locked out of their accounts for up to 24 hours after the company introduced new software that triggered a bug in the email program's code. A similar disruption happened in March.

Thursday's service outage will only add to concerns about the reliability of computing serivices delivered over the Internet, a field broadly known as "cloud computing." Google is touting cloud computing as an alternative to packaged software, like that sold by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT).

Google said an error in one of its systems rerouted some of its U.S. Web traffic through Asia, which created service disruptions that affected about 14% of its users.

In a blog post, Urs Hoelzle, Google's SVP of operations, likened the "embarrassing" glitch to a disruption caused by air traffic controllers.

"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. All planes are back on schedule now," he wrote.

On Thursday, Google shares fell 0.5% to $387.50.

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BY Scott Morrison - Dow Jones Newswires; 415-765-6118; scott.morrison@dowjones.com
Source:The Wall Street Journal

Copyright ©2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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