Google acknowledges widespread outages

No, it wasn't your imagination. For at least an hour today, millions of people nationwide found it difficult or impossible to access various websites operated by Internet search service Google Inc.

By mid-afternoon, California-based Google issued a statement on its blog that blamed the problems on configuration errors in its data network.

"An error in one of our systems caused us to direct some of our web traffic through Asia, which created a traffic jam," read a posting by Urs Hoelzle, senior vice president of operations. "As a result, about 14 percent of our users experienced slow services or even interruptions."

(To read Google's post about the problem, please click here.)

While Google did not immediately provide more details, website postings from Internet users described problems getting access to Google's flagship search service, as well as the Gmail electronic mail system and the Google-owned video service YouTube.

Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of SearchEngineLand.com, a website that tracks Google and other Internet search services, said that the outage shouldn't pose any long-term problems for Google or its users.

"I think it's probably more a minor thing," said Sullivan. "They don't have a history of these kinds of problems constantly coming up."

But he added that the incident could serve as a warning to Internet users who've come to depend on Google for "cloud computing" services, where users keep their e-mail and documents online, rather than on their own machines.

"It's going to cause some people to question, should I be using some of these cloud-based applications?" Sullivan said.

CNET reported that the problem appeared international in scope, an earlier post on Boston.com said.

According to ZDnet, Google confirmed Google News outages from 6:30 to 10 a.m., but hundreds of Twitter users, using the hash tag #googlefail, reported service problems throughout Google after that.

Of the Google News outrage, a company statement said: "Earlier today, Google News was temporarily unavailable for many users from approximately 3:30 a.m. until around 7 a.m. Pacific Time. This issue has now been resolved ... We know how important Google News is to our users, so we take issues like this very seriously. We apologize to those users who were affected."

At 12:40 p.m., the company added: "We're aware some users are having trouble accessing some Google services. We're looking into it, and we'll update everyone soon."

Google said issues with Google Mail had been resolved. "We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support," the statement said.
(By Hiawatha Bray, Globe staff, and Globe staff)