Cloud down! GChat and Google Drive experience service issues

By Mike Epstein Published March 17, 2014

Update 3/17/14 4:19 p.m. ET: Google’s app status dashboard indicates that all of their services are currently online and are experiencing “No issues,” according to the legend on the page.

Gchat is experiencing some technical issues today, with many users of the popular IM chat service reporting that they’re unable to send and receive messages. We initially suspected that there was an issue once multiple people here in the Digital Trends’ New York offices received “did not receive your chat” notifications after attempting to send IMs to one another. However, a quick look at Google’s official status page for Google Talk indicates that there is indeed a service problem.

Recommended Videos

Google posted a Google Talk dashboard update at 12:22 pm, which currently reads:

“We’re investigating reports of an issue with Google Talk. We will provide more information shortly.”

A few quick glances around the Internet confirmed that this was indeed at least a somewhat widespread issue for Google’s messaging service.

Screen Shot 2014-03-17 at 12.13.18 PM — Gchat users fled to Twitter to complain about how they can’t chat. Image used with permission by copyright holder

Though there are also reports indicating that there have been issues with Google Drive, the tech firm’s cloud service, we took a look at our own accounts, and for the most part, we had no issues. However, Google’s app dashboard also indicates that Google Sheets, Drive’s spreadsheet service, has experienced a “Service disruption” as of 12:47 p.m. today. Google is currently investigating that matter as well. The dashboard also indicates a Google+ Hangouts disruption as of 12:22 p.m.

Google’s cloud and chat services are generally reliable, which is part of the reason why they’re so widely used. However, the downside to that is when those services do encounter issues, it impacts a significant amount of people across multiple backgrounds: students, professionals and other as well. This is actually not the first Google service outage of the year: a hiccup occurred in late January and left users without Gmail and Google Talk access for 15 minutes. Prior to that, Google Talk also went down a few hours in July of 2012.

Image Credit: Wallnen.com

Former Associate Editor, Gaming

Michael is a New York-based tech and culture reporter, and a graduate of Northwestwern University’s Medill School of…

Topics

Web
Google

Computing

Tech giants are gaga over AI, but employees say the AI race is making their jobs harder

Employees at some of AI’s biggest companies say the AI push is bringing longer hours and heavier workloads

Claude on a MacBook Pro.

Tech companies have spent years promising that AI will help people accomplish more in less time. Inside several companies leading that race, some employees are describing an awkward consequence. More productive tools haven’t necessarily produced shorter working days.

Workers at OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Google told the BBC about punishing schedules and AI projects consuming nights and weekends. The twist is that their employers increasingly have evidence that AI really can help people get more done.

Computing

Your MacBook trackpad can now purr like a cat, and it’s surprisingly convincing

A clever new Mac app uses your MacBook's Force Touch trackpad to recreate the feeling of a real cat purring under your palm.

PurrPad featured

Mac developers keep finding new ways to make their laptops do things Apple never intended. Earlier this year, an app went viral for making MacBooks moan when slapped. Another unique app lets you feel a webpage's buttons through the trackpad before you click them. Now, a developer has built one that makes the trackpad purr like a cat.

PurrPad makes use of the Taptic Engine built into MacBook trackpads, so instead of hearing a purr through your speakers, you feel one under your palm. Developer Francesco Pavanetto, who shared the app on Reddit, says he tuned the vibration to the actual measured pitch of a real cat purr and built it so the pattern never repeats exactly.

Computing

MIT researchers found a new Spectre attack that can slip past Intel and AMD defenses

AMD Ryzen CPU inside a socket installed on a motherboard

Spectre has been haunting CPU security since 2018, and MIT researchers have now found another way to make it misbehave. The new TONTOU attack can bypass some of the defenses Intel and AMD have added over the years by exploiting a tiny gap in how those protections work. The research comes from Daniël Trujillo and Mengjia Yan at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Their findings show that even after a processor wipes or isolates information used by its branch predictor, there can be a brief window before that information is actually used. TONTOU, short for Time-of-Neutralization to Time-of-Use, attacks precisely that gap.

The tiny gap that TONTOU exploits