Google services go down, access spotty

senseless1707 · 17 Apr 2013

Thanks for the heads up.

Layback Bear · 17 Apr 2013

Let me guess. All those services are in a cloud.

Dallas 7 · 17 Apr 2013

Layback Bear said:

Let me guess. All those services are in a cloud.

Late Tuesday night I experienced a cloud related service disruption for Apple's ITunes for a few hours.
Don't know if there's any correlation or not.
Something tells me maybe that cloud stuff isn't always what it's cracked up to be.

King Arthur · 18 Apr 2013

Unless you run your own email servers, email is "in the cloud" by design, so it would be unfair to attack it for that reason.

That said, cloud service disruptions are a signal everytime that nothing beats local services in reliability. Internet go out? Google Drive dead? No problem, your HDD is still there waiting patiently for you.

Layback Bear · 18 Apr 2013

That was my jest. Cloud computing is nice but not dependable or predictable.

Lady Fitzgerald · 18 Apr 2013

And what is the cloud? Just interconnected mechanical devices, usually ones more reliable that the consumer versions most of us use. Mechanical glitches and failures can happen in the cloud just like they can locally. People can make mistakes, both in the cloud and locally.

Some cloud services are good, some are unreliable. Some software is good, some is bad. Some mechanical devices are good, some are not. Total reliance on local software and hardware is no better or no worse than total reliance on the cloud.

Same as with mechanical devices, with the cloud, you generally get what you pay for.