Wanted: Google Groups
Posted by Jorge Bernal July 18, 2007
Bizarre. At this moment, google is missing its groups
The home page is returning random 500 errors and individual groups are accessible but empty
Discussions aren’t available right now. We’re sorry. Try again shortly.
I am also having a lot of problems with google over the last couple of weeks; 404 errors on spreadsheets when clicking on my file (!), 500 errors on spredsheets sometimes, spreadsheet being globally slow to use, troubles with gmail being slow, or unable to login at all, …
Hey, this is great! It shows - very drastically - the problem of vendor lock-in and the advantages of distributed infrastructure. Google provides a lot of services, but they make you dependent on this single firm.
So maybe this is a good time to switch back to good old usenet for discussions? Or mailing lists? Where the unavailability of one server doesn’t stop the whole communication process?