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Google blames rerouting mistake on world blackout
Millions of people who use Google were thrown into a loop yesterday when the search engine went off line due to an error with traffic routing.
Affected by the outage was several services including Youtube, Gmail and Google News Australia
“An error in one of our systems caused us to direct some of our Web traffic through Asia, which created a traffic jam,” said Urs Hoelzle, Google’s senior VP of operations. “Imagine if you were trying to fly from New York to San Francisco, but your plane was routed through an airport in Asia. 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. That’s basically what happened.”
Hoelzle estimated that about 15 percent of people who use the service were affected, including those in China, Australia and the United States.
