dan9999
03-25-2010, 05:39 PM
Google mum on YouTube outage
By Doug Gross, CNN
March 25, 2010 12:17 p.m. EDT
(CNN) -- Google Inc., owner of YouTube, wasn't commenting Thursday morning on why the popular video-sharing site was down for about an hour.
"YouTube is up again following a technical issue which has now been resolved," a spokeswoman for Google said in a written statement. "We know how important YouTube is for people and apologize for any inconvenience the downtime may have caused."
The outage apparently lasted for about an hour, from roughly 7 to 8 a.m. ET.
When asked for a specific cause, the spokeswoman said Google is not commenting "at this time."
The official blogs for both Google and YouTube made no mention of the outage late Thursday morning.
During the time YouTube was down, Internet users were still able to access individual videos, but YouTube's main page returned a "Http/1.1 Service Unavailable" message.
The outage came less than a week after Google announced it would no longer censor search results in China.
Google released no information to suggest the outage was related. But the search-engine giant has been embroiled in a public feud with the Communist nation since January, when Google said it was the target of a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack" originating in China.
"I think many people are -- understandably -- looking for China to take some unique and extraordinary technical measures to 'punish' Google," said Ron Deibert, director of Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk Centre for International Studies.
"But so far what I have seen is business as usual, and this includes the filtering that is happening at the backbone/gateway levels that have been more or less consistent for a long period of time."
Google began operating in China in 2006, agreeing to limited censorship of what the government there considers controversial sites.
A dashboard page posted by Google after it made its announcement shows that YouTube, one of the Internet's most popular sites, has been blocked in mainland China for the past four days.
Google Sites and Blogger also have been blocked, while other Google properties like photo site Picasa and Google Docs have been partially blocked, according to the page.
Web search and Google Images, which like other services now originate from Google servers in Hong Kong, were reporting no blockage on the page.
The YouTube downtime created much online buzz early Thursday. The term "Service Unavailable" became a trending topic and many blogs were speculating on a possible China connection.
The outage came a day after Wikipedia, the user-created online encyclopedia, was down for several hours.
"As for the source of the YouTube problems -- I am sure they are investigating and it could be a billion problems, just as it was for Wikipedia, which turned out to be a server cooling problem, according to reports," Deibert said.
By Doug Gross, CNN
March 25, 2010 12:17 p.m. EDT
(CNN) -- Google Inc., owner of YouTube, wasn't commenting Thursday morning on why the popular video-sharing site was down for about an hour.
"YouTube is up again following a technical issue which has now been resolved," a spokeswoman for Google said in a written statement. "We know how important YouTube is for people and apologize for any inconvenience the downtime may have caused."
The outage apparently lasted for about an hour, from roughly 7 to 8 a.m. ET.
When asked for a specific cause, the spokeswoman said Google is not commenting "at this time."
The official blogs for both Google and YouTube made no mention of the outage late Thursday morning.
During the time YouTube was down, Internet users were still able to access individual videos, but YouTube's main page returned a "Http/1.1 Service Unavailable" message.
The outage came less than a week after Google announced it would no longer censor search results in China.
Google released no information to suggest the outage was related. But the search-engine giant has been embroiled in a public feud with the Communist nation since January, when Google said it was the target of a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack" originating in China.
"I think many people are -- understandably -- looking for China to take some unique and extraordinary technical measures to 'punish' Google," said Ron Deibert, director of Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk Centre for International Studies.
"But so far what I have seen is business as usual, and this includes the filtering that is happening at the backbone/gateway levels that have been more or less consistent for a long period of time."
Google began operating in China in 2006, agreeing to limited censorship of what the government there considers controversial sites.
A dashboard page posted by Google after it made its announcement shows that YouTube, one of the Internet's most popular sites, has been blocked in mainland China for the past four days.
Google Sites and Blogger also have been blocked, while other Google properties like photo site Picasa and Google Docs have been partially blocked, according to the page.
Web search and Google Images, which like other services now originate from Google servers in Hong Kong, were reporting no blockage on the page.
The YouTube downtime created much online buzz early Thursday. The term "Service Unavailable" became a trending topic and many blogs were speculating on a possible China connection.
The outage came a day after Wikipedia, the user-created online encyclopedia, was down for several hours.
"As for the source of the YouTube problems -- I am sure they are investigating and it could be a billion problems, just as it was for Wikipedia, which turned out to be a server cooling problem, according to reports," Deibert said.