[LINK] Clouded Vision

[Richard Chirgwin]

Scott Howard wrote:
> On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 12:35 AM, Richard Chirgwin <rchirgwin at ozemail.com.au
>> wrote:
> 
>> place to store data than the local hard drive; but for a bank to sign up
>> for a
>> service which says "give us your data and we won't promise availability" is
>> really stupid.
> 
> 
> What "data" is the bank giving Google?

Consider my remark amended ...

> 
> They are simply using a web tracking service - something almost every major
> website on the internet will use, with many (most?) of them being outsourced
> to the likes of Google Analytics.

Yes; and that's a constant PITA, when designers make access to the site
dependent on a response from the third-party site.

> 
> In this case it sounds like the bank in question had a poorly designed
> website which didn't allow for the fact that one component of the page may
> not load in a reasonable time (if at all). Many websites now draw content
> from multiple sources - well written ones will handle the fact that one or
> more particular inputs may be down - you can't blame Google for that fact
> that this bank's website didn't!

Hmm. There's so much that you can't blame Google for. But Google wants to be at
the centre of everything; it is in part responsible to make sure its responses
work well enough not to impede anyone else.

(Of course, another response is that people should resist the encroaching power
of monopolists, but that's at best a minority response).

RC

> 
> 
> At the end of the day, cloud service outages like this are just like an
> airplane crash - they are big news and impact lots of people, but that
> doesn't mean that flying is less safe than driving. How many corporates
> suffer an outage to their mail server on a daily basis? How many of those
> make the news?
> 
>   Scott.
>