Sunday, August 18, 2013

When google sneezes, the web catches a cold

A bit of the google colossus went off-line for about five minutes or so on August 16th. It was a few minutes before midnight.


How can that happen?

What is google up to that a small hiccup in their server farms would result in a 40% drop in internet traffic?

There are several amusing possibilities that come to mind. Here are two to think about.

1) google has so many spiders and web crawlers grabbing data and making links that it alone is the single biggest user of web data on all of the interwebs. 

2) the tools used to measure web-traffic are so dependent on google that a google outage wiped out a great bulk of the the web traffic tracking software that is used on the internet. The drop in traffic was more of an illusion than a reality.

I am betting on the second guess. Though, it should be noted that the two guesses are not mutually exclusive. 

2 comments:

  1. I'll go for both answers.
    Syrah, we are back on our old .blogspot.com for a day or two due to technical updates and going on a new host. Join us there if you can.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Syrah,

    Forwarded from pBMb.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11995913/Terrorists-are-defining-Islam.-We-Muslims-must-react.html

    Halfway down is a reference to Muhammad Abduh.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Abduh

    The Mu`tazili were heavily influenced by Greek thought, and were hammered out of existence in-or-about the 10th Century by the Salafists. I can supply a Word doc format of the content at http://mutazila.net/

    The Asharite principle of "Allah's will" (which you've so often referred to) was concocted in-or-about the 9th Century in direct opposition to the Mu`tazilites.

    Resurrecting the Mu`tazili School isn't an end-all-be-all for an Islamic Reform Movement, but given protection and sustenance, it would be a start.

    pBMb

    ReplyDelete

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