Google admits error took down traffic

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After speculation about its slow service hit the web yesterday, Google has admitted an error interrupted some users' connections yesterday.

Google seemed to be down for many users for parts of yesterday, sparking rumours on sites like Twitter that the web giant had been hit by a denial of service attack.

Google said in a blog post that a system error rerouted web traffic through Asia, creating a “traffic jam” affecting about 14 per cent of users for an hour yesterday afternoon.

Senior vice president for operations Urs Hoelzle compared the rerouting to airlines. “Imagine if you were trying to fly from New York to San Francisco, but your plane was routed through an airport in Asia," he wrote. "And a bunch of other planes were sent that way too, so your flight was backed up and your journey took much longer than expected."

Google has been pushing its “always on” service to help promote its version of web-based computing, with its Gmail and Docs systems. Its webmail service has been down a few times in the past year, however, while Google accidentally labelled the entire web as a security risk earlier this year, making it difficult to view searched-for sites.

"We've been working hard to make our services ultrafast and "always on," so it's especially embarrassing when a glitch like this one happens," Hoelzle wrote. "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."

Click here to read more about the problems facing Google.

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