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What If Google Went Dark?

7/25/2013 12:35:00 PM
By: Minyanville

All investors should care about Google ( GOOG ), even those without any positions in the company. The magnitude of Google's impact on the Internet -- and, very likely, on your day-to-day business activities -- is immense.


You don't have to be an analyst to realize that our attachment is fierce: In the US, Google sites recorded 192.6 million unique visitors in June 2013 , leaving behind Yahoo ( YHOO ) sites with 189 million and Microsoft ( MSFT ) sites with 175 million.

With over a million servers scattered around the globe and interconnected within an incredibly optimized and robust infrastructure , Google seems to be technically invincible - at least, to some extent.

But the bigger they are, the harder they fall.








Lost access to Google Voice calls and Google Hangouts? Try Facebook (FB) Voice, Skype , or Viber instead. A goodol ' phone might be a solution here, too.

Entertainment would suffer a great hit if Picasa or YouTube became nonoperational - how about Yahoo's Flickr or Vimeo instead?

You might get lost or stuck in traffic when Google Maps becomes inaccessible. That's not a huge deal, frankly; you might have someGmaps cached on your device, or you'll need to turn to Apple Maps, Bing Maps powered by Nokia (NOK), OpenStreetMap, or even those vintage paper maps.


If you're one of the millions of active Orkut ers or are hanging out on Google+ with 343 million other users, you'll probably miss the opportunity to connect with your friends. That won't be the end of the world, though, with Facebook, LinkedIn (LNKD), Twitter, or whatever other social media sites have you covered.

Some services are harder to substitute. Tens of millions users who rely on Google Public DNS to essentially get access to the Internet would have to switch to something else - like their providers' DNS.

Things would get a bit trickier if you're one of the thousands of lucky Google Fiber users in Kansas City; you might have to switch to the otherISPs or use mobile Internet for a while.

No need to go through all the dozens and dozens of Google products and services (or hundreds, if you count the smallest ones) - you've got the picture already, right?


Now take a deep breath. Exhale.


While a lasting outage of Google and its services is highly unlikely - givenGoogle 's expected 99.9% uptime - it's still better to be safe than sorry, especially if you're dealing with markets and money.


Just don't put all your eggs in one basket - and that's true for investments, too.

See also:

Apple Fights Off Samsung's Quadruple Bypass Hummer of a Phone

