SiliconBeat

UPDATE: In a post on the Official Google Blog, Google describes the problem as a routing issue. Urs Hoelzle, senior vice president of operations, wrote that “an error in one of our systems caused us to direct some of our web traffic through Asia, which created a traffic jam. As a result, about 14% of our users experienced slow services or even interruptions.”

An unspecified technical problem prevented Google users all over the world from accessing their favorite Google services on Thursday morning, starting around 7:48 a.m. Pacific time. As fast as people could type out their quips and complaints, reports of problems with Google search, YouTube, Google Analytics, Google APIs, Google Docs, Google Maps and Google Reader came pouring in from Copenhagen to Venezuela. Google acknowledged “a problem” had affected “a small subset of users,” but as of 11 a.m. had not provided additional details.

Responding to some blog reports that the issue may have been related to AT&T’s network, John Britton, a spokesman for AT&T said Google’s problem was “not related to AT&T.”

Below is the timeline:

8:23 a.m. PST Google’s Apps Status Dashboard reported a glitch with Gmail that it said may have affected other services. “We’re aware of a problem with Google Mail affecting a small subset of users. The affected users are unable to access Google Mail. We will provide an update by May 14, 2009 10:00:00 AM UTC-7 detailing when we expect to resolve the problem. Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change.”

9:28 am. PST The company also posted this message on Twitter: “We’re aware some users are having trouble accessing some Google services. We’re looking into it, and we’ll update everyone soon.”

9:39 a.m. PST A new post on the Apps Status Dashboard said, “The problem with Google Mail should be resolved.”

9:50 a.m. PST Just Ping, a web-monitoring company reports the following packet losses from Google.com.:
Amsterdam 80% packets dropped; Austin, TX 80 %; Copenhagen, Denmark 100%; Haifa, Israel 80%, Hong Kong 70%; Krakow, Poland 70%; Lille, France 60%; Nagano, Japan 80%; New York 90%; Oslo, Norway 100%; Rio de Janeiro 60%; and Santa Clara, CA 10%;

10:33 a.m. PST Google posts this statement on Twitter and e-mails it to reporters: “The issue affecting some Google services has been resolved. We’re sorry for the inconvenience, and we’ll share more details soon.”

Here are some sample comments from Twitter’s #googlefail thread.

@swu how can I tell if the world is ending if I can’t google it?
@Rinze Google se madrileñiza
@mtigas First e-mail received post-#googlefail: “50% off Thousands of DVDs.” Great! I wonder if I ever needed Google & Gmail in the first place
@giyomu Google + Gmail + Googleapi down ? WTF ? Orange ? Probablement. #googlefail
@vulgrin wife’s email is fine, on same domain / account. I’m going to go apeshit if this doesn’t resolve itself soon
@amontag Minor anxiety attack over #googlefail over. Moving on with the day
@Google es a Internet lo que una hallaca a la navidad venezolana
@maxmerz Google lebt wieder. Gmail auch. Der Reader auch. Juchu.
@MickWest Google broke the internet!

SlingPlayer for the iPhone

The problem with Sling Media’s new new iPhone application has nothing to do with the fact that it’s running on the iPhone, an AT&T spokesman, responding to the controversy over the new program, told me today.

Sling today released its long awaited iPhone application, which allows users to stream live television signals to the iconic smartphone. But unlike beta versions of the program, the final release is critically hobbled by the fact that it can’t use AT&T’s 3G network. Instead, it can only access the signals over WiFi networks.

Company spokesman Mark Siegel explained to me this afternoon that AT&T considers the streaming of television signals to any device over its wireless data network to be a violation of its terms of service.

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AT&T was excoriated earlier this month by the technorati attending the South By Southwest conference in Austin. It seems with all the geeks attending the confab with their iPhones, the carrier’s network was overloaded. Attendees reportedly couldn’t access the Web, send text messages or even place phone calls.

The giant carrier did address the problems — two days after the conference started — by turning up the bandwidth on its existing towers.

One might think that the company would learn its lesson; i.e., a critical mass of geeks in one area at one time yields network overload. But apparently not.

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