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Ask HN: What's going on at google?

60 points by oscardelben ↗ HN
It seems to me that some google services are not working properly lately.

For example I have some problems using safari with gmail (wont open at all) and with google groups (infinte redirects between their login system). The only way I can browse those google services is by using chrome.

But except for those browser specific issues, services like feedburner are driving us crazy. Feedburner counter is incorrect every other day, showing google reader subscribers one day and forgetting about it the other. Every blogger I talked with is annoyed by this problem. This specific problem has been bothering us for many weeks now, and I suspect there's nobody working on it.

Am I the only one who has noticed issues like these lately (except for feedburner which is not working for everyone)?

59 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 132 ms ] thread
quizbiz
You're not the only one.
andrewtj
It does feel like there's been a lack of polish of late. Main things that bug me are that AdWords keeps telling me to upgrade to Safari 4 from Safari 5 and the redirect loop on Google Groups that inevitably results in a page telling me I'm a bot sending automated queries.
bad_user
The redirect loop in Google Groups happen to me too ... yesterday I could only read the groups I'm subscribed to by being logged-out (as it happens only when I'm logged-in).
ngvrnd
I've noticed problems lately with Gmail in Safari on the iPod Touch, and the Reader app has always had problems on the Touch. For what it's worth, I'm in the US Northeast.
thirsteh
For the login-related problems with Safari, it should help to empty its cache.
po
My google complaints:

* Any public google group gets flooded with spam

* I get NRA spam that gets through gmail's spam filter every time even though I mark it as spam. I'm not the only one. Apple mail correctly flags it but google is oblivious. Whatever they're doing, I'm surprised other people aren't doing it too.

On a side note: my hypothesis is that if google ever dies, it will go out the way Sun did.

michael_dorfman
Purchased by Larry Ellison? That's a terrifying thought.
po
Indeed. Larry's motto appears to be: I don't think I'm all that evil.
samratjp
And that guy had/has a Maserati Problem too!
jan_g
Infinite redirects happen to me sometimes when I switch (log-out, log-in) accounts -> my wife and I use the same computer at home. When that happens, I have to clear cookies and browser cache and then it starts working ok.
Psyonic
I've noticed this happens if you log-in then log-out before the page is finished loading (including G-chat, etc.) When you try to log-in again, it often does the infinite redirect. Of course, there may be other causes as well.
Mc_Big_G
I also noticed something weird with Google lately. Even when I'm signed into my google account, if I go to youtube, it asks me to sign in. When I click the sign in link and use my google/youtube account, it redirects me to the "Do you already have a YouTube Account?" page where I can log in ,which doesn't work, or create a new account. WTF?
qeorge
I had the Google Groups infinite redirect happening last week. Cleared my session and cookies, and that seemed to fix it.
bitsai
Same thing happened to me just yesterday (6/22/10). Clearing the session and cookies solved it for me as well.
rays
Are you using safari 5? I have the same issue from time to time on AWS and Google since Safari 5
bitsai
I was using Google Chrome (on Ubuntu Lucid).
SkyMarshal
Same and same, plus with Chromium daily snapshots.
oscardelben
I can browse google groups again after resetting cookies etc (not just cache), but I still can't access gmail, neither via http nor https.
random42
Why not send email to google customer support, and ask them, if you are genuinely interested in knowing?
WalterGR
Google doesn't have customer support.
random42
I mean to say that if one is genuinely interested in solving a problem, ranting/cribbing in front of people who cannot do much, instead of bringing the issue up with the source of the problem, is rarely an effective solution.
WalterGR
The guy was just expressing his opinion. What the fuck is with all the downvotes, HN?

Did the karma requirement for earning downvote privileges get reduced?

I might as well limit myself to Reddit. Same attitude, more content.

mati
He is not google's customer.
WalterGR
We're all Google's customers. The majority of us just don't write them a check.
po
Most of us are not Google's customers. We are the raw materials google uses to fabricate a product to sell.
ori_b
No, we're google's products. The advertisers are their customers.
WalterGR
Are you a "customer" if you exchange something of value for a service?

I think you are. By this definition, I am a customer of Google, as is anyone in this thread who uses a Google service.

But I am not the final arbiter of meaning. The downvotes to my comment show that I am clearly wrong on this subject.

ori_b
Well, by that definition, Google can also be considered your customer. Or any vendor can also be considered their customer's customer.
WalterGR
I don't think I understand what you mean... Do you mean swapping the roles via inverting the sense of "giver of something of value" and "provider of service"? As in:

"I provide Google the service of access to my personal data, and they give me use of Gmail as a payment, therefore Google is my customer."

"I provide my vendor the service of access to currency, and they give me a product as a payment, therefore my vendor is my customer."

That seems like a stretch, so I must be missing something.

ori_b
No, I'm just saying that it's a very vague way of defining a customer/vendor.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
testgoogl
I've been getting these infinite loops at login in gmail about once a week now. It's getting ridiculous. Google, please fix this. Sometimes clearing cookies doesn't even help
po
I don't think you're wrong per-se… I think that's one way of looking at it and is the way preferred by most people. It's nice to be a customer. You have power and control.

In this case, I would argue that you're bartering your attention for a service. To me the word customer implies an exchange of money - almost by definition. As I mentioned in my raw materials comment, Google turns around and sells your attention to advertisers: their real customers. They need you, but not in the same way they need their customers.

I voted your comment back to 1. I don't agree with your viewpoint, but I don't think it's a wrong viewpoint.

portman
I can't access GMail via IMAP today. Started at 5:15 AM EST.

Google Apps accounts are fine; this is only consumer GMail.

And yes, I've been having problems with GMail, FeedBurner, and Docs with escalating frequency.

izendejas
IMAP went down for me over a month ago. Gave up.
josephd
Why is the common denominator to these problems Safari? Any thoughts?
illumin8
Just an idea here - Safari 5 now pre-caches DNS requests for links on a page. Is it possible that Google is doing some DNS-fu to load balance across multiple data centers that causes strange issues like the infinite redirects because there is a delay between when the DNS request was cached and the user clicks on the link?
pragmatic
I see same issues with Chrome. Infinite redirect, slow gmail.
suppressingfire
I've seen the same issue intermittently with gmail and calendar under Firefox 3.6, even though I'm properly logged in to iGoogle and reader...
ydant
Gmail has been amazingly slow and timing out for me a lot lately (Chrome/Linux). The rest of the apps (and Gmail through Android) seem to be fine.
johnyzee
For at least four months the AdSense landing page has had an apologetic message explaining why you have to log in again even though you are already logged into your Google account. Really wondering if Google engineers have extremely short attention spans when it comes to 'old' projects,
jimfl
For 3 days, Google Buzz mobile loads, but the Ajax refresh just spins, and never loads new content. Posting also fails. Mail works fine mostly. This is on the iPad.
rrc
Google Docs export functionality was also broken all yesterday, resulting in an infinite redirect loop upon download.
elblanco
I've noticed some problems with the interfaces of some of the apps, like voice and gmail, not functioning properly unless I reload. It's particularly bad on voice, I can't get it to make a call about 30% of the time because the buttons are broken.

edit and I'm getting tired of having to relogin to half of the widgets on my www.google.com/ig page three or four times a day because they aren't tracking my sessions properly.

jrp
Monday and Tuesday the iPod Touch's mail app wouldn't sync with Gmail. It started working again last night.
gokhan
Bah. Come here to Turkey and see what can possibly go wrong with Google :)

(Just ignore me. )

pasbesoin
A while back, the online applications stopped working for me in anything but Chrome (well, I refused to try IE). I haven't tried again, lately (so, another Google win?).
joshfraser
and why do so many of google's properties not work in chrome? like adsense? and google analytics (well some days it works, others it doesn't)

and gmail is slow. and calendar is unavailable half the time.

if people are having problems with safari, it might be a webkit issue since i'm seeing the same issues in chrome.

joshfraser
oh and don't get me started on their contact sync with the iphone
axod
Chrome seems to have had quite a few issues lately. Had a few reports of it not working with Mibbit. The Chrome developer channel build seems better, so hopefully that'll solve some things.