What if Google went down for a week or two

[manacheck]

https://techxplore.com/news/2020-08-goo ... world.html

Popular Google services including Gmail and Drive were down for many users around the world on Thursday, with the US technology giant telling affected people they were "aware of a service disruption."

Frustrated customers in countries including Australia, Japan, France and the United States complained online of the outage and tracking website DownDetector reported Google services were down in every continent.

This prompted me to think about how, sometimes, it's not just internet connectivity that can go down unexpectedly. Google has been actively working to become a monopoly of the internet for some time, from e-mail logins to social media and youtube, to having a hand in online bill paying, to being a relied-upon free language translation service and search engine.

I think about, when I want to order something, maybe groceries, online, if my email was inaccessible and the vendor wanted me to confirm my account-associated email, or my order via email, or for whatever reason via my email before letting me continue (hi amazon), that may mean I can't place an order if my account email is unavailable. Other things I could think of... if I'm trying to pay a bill that's due. Or if I'm trying to check on my family (well, not me, but many rely on social media for family conections), or for news, or to search-engine/youtube how to do a time-critical thing.

It's not the same issue as "the internet is down" where maybe I can take a trip somewhere that has working connections. It's also not the same as all internet sites being down completely. But it's a stumbling block. And it makes me think about what that would impact for me personally, as well as people in general, if Google accounts suddenly experienced a widespread and lengthy service disruption through all or some of its more critical services.

Is this something anyone preps for, or is it more a "take it as it comes and solve it then" thing? It's kind of a far-reaching platform. Tips and tricks for alternatives, when your e-mail, websearch, and connections to your community that rely on things like Google have service interruptions?

I think my own go-to, having not thought about it much, would be a combination of "riding it out" and "acute, heavily aggrevated stress meltdown" when suddenly the things I'm accustomed to being able to rely on to are inaccessible and cause me real-world problems, like unpaid bills equaling phone service disruptions or inaccessible online grocery procurement meaning seeking alternatives under pressure at an increased financial cost.

Maybe the best thing I could do would be to start thinking of what any inaccessible account would hold that couldn't be replicated through another service. Like e-mail address lists of family members could be copied and kept somewhere off network. That, and investigate alternative service providers for e-mail/search engines so if that's happening, at least I wouldn't be wasting four hours eliminating irritating alternative websites while under a time crunch to get a thing done that only e-mail will be accepted for. Gmail isn't hardly a tip of the Google iceberg, and I'm kind of having a hard time figuring out what all would be impacted, if Google in its entirety was impacted, but I know it'd be a lot of stuff.

(Mods, If this isn't the right place to post this, please feel free to move it. Seems like a city/urban forum appropriate subject, but it's 2020. I'm mentally prepared to be wrong.)

[TacAir]

The loss of Google would matter - for a while. Something else would come along to replace it, just like AltaVista or Ask Jeeves.

Having a paper list of email addresses is something that should have been done a long time ago. I don't save anything via the Google.
We also keep a running IP listing of web site we visit. E business like Amazon has enough horsepower to keep going w/o the Google.

Schools would likely take a major hit - locally most schools use Google docs for all school work - homework and submissions. All the local kiddos just got 'free' Chromebooks' for school at home.

Now, if Google and the other tech giants went down due to a massive earthquake in the Left Coast, all bets are off.

There was life before the internet and before Google. and life would go on. I mean, just how many 'cat videos' can you watch?

[woodsghost]

The loss of Google would matter - for a while. Something else would come along to replace it, just like AltaVista or Ask Jeeves.

DuckDuckGo. I like it a lot. It has been a main search engine for me for about 2.5 years now.

There was life before the internet and before Google. and life would go on. I mean, just how many 'cat videos' can you watch?

A lot. There is always room for 1 more


Good advice and I should commit much more to paper. I rely on electronics a lot.

[raptor2]

Google's failure as a search engine function would not be a disaster.

However as you noted they supply a lot of back office services.They along with Amazon and Microsoft form a huge part of the IT backbones in the small business world. Which IMO is fucking scary in and of itself. We worry about the .gov reading our correspondence but these organizations have both access and the ability to scan all comms going in and out of their email servers. this provides them with a unprecidented level of access to insider business information.

In my office we use both google email servers and microsoft office online for different businesses.

[boskone]

I've been disconnecting from Google, because they're freakin' creepy. Plus I disapprove of some of their politics.

I use a paid email provider (Fastmail) for email, primarily Duck Duck Go for search, my servers are either VMs or a non-Google VPS, and I'm even looking for a good alternative to the otherwise-excellent Google Voice for phone.

About the only place they still have an almost irreplaceable lead is maps; Bing, Apple Maps, and the like really just aren't as good IMO.

[PistolPete]

I've been disconnecting from Google, because they're freakin' creepy. Plus I disapprove of some of their politics.

You and me both!

If their search went down it would take down other search engines that use their DB, like DuckDuckGo. If their cloud services went down it would drop a lot of websites. Same goes for Amazon, who hosts a ton of websites in AWS. Both would also drop business services for clients that have moved from on prem to the cloud. It would be a mess at first, with lasting effects for months.

But then it would be better. Fuck a bunch of Google (Alphabet). They are one of the companies (along with Amazon) most likely to bring about the distopian future we see in so many works of fiction.

[boskone]

I've been disconnecting from Google, because they're freakin' creepy. Plus I disapprove of some of their politics.

You and me both!

If their search went down it would take down other search engines that use their DB, like DuckDuckGo.

FWIW, DDG also has their own crawler as well as pulling data from non-Google engines; I know Bing and Wolfram Alpha, at least.

As for the websites that use Google (Amazon, MS, whoever) in mission-critical ways...in a way, I hope that goes pfft. I can see offering a common login, but websites that depend on it are IMO pretty dumb, and I don't see a real benefit to canvas trackers/cross-site scripting/etc. Host your own scripts, lazyasses. :p

[eugene]

I run my own "cloud" server so I'm not affected.

[Andimia]

All of my bills are on autopay (thanks ADHD) so I wouldn't be too worried, also most of my 2fa (two-factor authorization) goes through text to my phone. If those networks are down there are some bigger issues to deal with. In 18 years of having various cellphones I've only had one stolen from me, the rest all survived in my possession with only one cracked but still working screen.

[Blast]

We worry about the .gov reading our correspondence but these organizations have both access and the ability to scan all comms going in and out of their email servers. this provides them with a unprecidented level of access to insider business information.

Back when I was in the oil industry we weren't allowed to Google any information that we were using to develop new technology. The belief was Google was watching what search terms scientists were using and would jump in with possible patents on the technology before we could submit patents ourselves.
-Blast

[woodsghost]

We worry about the .gov reading our correspondence but these organizations have both access and the ability to scan all comms going in and out of their email servers. this provides them with a unprecidented level of access to insider business information.

Back when I was in the oil industry we weren't allowed to Google any information that we were using to develop new technology. The belief was Google was watching what search terms scientists were using and would jump in with possible patents on the technology before we could submit patents ourselves.
-Blast

I've heard of people getting job offers from Google based on what they were searching for. If they were developing a skill set Google wanted, a little thing like "privacy" wouldn't stand in the way.

[raptor2]

When a company, person, .gov has both access to AND the ability to read everyone's e-mail traffic, there is no way they could resist that temptation.

At one time I was less concerned about since the volume of traffic basically defied the ability to screen it. Now however even with a massive jump in volume the introduction of AI will remove that obstacle completely in a very short time.

I was recently surprised by the extent of the capability that exists now. I bought a burner phone for 2 party authentification purposes. I wanted a separate phone simply to receive verification texts. So bought a simple flip phone from Tracphone for $.01 and 90 days of text services via a instore purchase of the time. I paid cash and simply registered it without a name or CC.

I entered the phone number for Amazon, Gmail and a business bank account as the # to text with the digital code for access. I keep it turned off when not in use. I have never made a phone call or sent a text. It is for incoming texts only.

In less than 2 weeks it was receiving spam texts directed to me by name. Clearly the Tracphone Group worked with Amazon and Google to sell my data and this phone #.

[Blast]

I've heard of people getting job offers from Google based on what they were searching for. If they were developing a skill set Google wanted, a little thing like "privacy" wouldn't stand in the way.

Interesting! Hmmm, maybe it's time to write an automated Google search script that scans for Google technology news and then auto-searches those terms...
-Blast

[MPMalloy]

When a company, person, .gov has both access to AND the ability to read everyone's e-mail traffic, there is no way they could resist that temptation.

At one time I was less concerned about since the volume of traffic basically defied the ability to screen it. Now however even with a massive jump in volume the introduction of AI will remove that obstacle completely in a very short time.

I was recently surprised by the extent of the capability that exists now. I bought a burner phone for 2 party authentification purposes. I wanted a separate phone simply to receive verification texts. So bought a simple flip phone from Tracphone for $.01 and 90 days of text services via a instore purchase of the time. I paid cash and simply registered it without a name or CC.

I entered the phone number for Amazon, Gmail and a business bank account as the # to text with the digital code for access. I keep it turned off when not in use. I have never made a phone call or sent a text. It is for incoming texts only.

In less than 2 weeks it was receiving spam texts directed to me by name. Clearly the Tracphone Group worked with Amazon and Google to sell my data and this phone #.

It is becoming harder & harder to simply be free.

[manacheck]

I appreciate all the food for thought on this topic, guys.

Google does do creepy too much and too overtly, but it's also made itself "needed" increasingly and strategically by positioning itself to being a main reaching source for certain things, with a goal towards being the only viable choice for most things across the web.

Thanks for the suggestions. Duckduckgo is much less sketchy as a search engine. Like was mentioned, even the competition of Google often rely on Google to function, so trying to unravel that mess is gross.

When a company, person, .gov has both access to AND the ability to read everyone's e-mail traffic, there is no way they could resist that temptation.

QFT, raptor. This is a VERY human behavior. The fact that everyone with the ability to read e-mail traffic is an individual human gets kind of overlooked in favor of vaguely viewing employees as a poorly defined conglomorate force that is separate from human flaws or practices.

[scuffedboots]

While we all would move to other search engines if Google went down, like DuckDuckGo, Bing, Yahoo, Searx..., we have to realize that Google is just not a search engine. They have news, photos, YouTube, Email, and so many more things. Think about all of the websites that you go to with Google Captchas. And did you know that Google has trackers installed on 75% of the top million internet websites?

So many websites come to rely on Google for operation, if they went down a big chunk of the internet would go down with it until developers could go in and disable those connections or move to other alternatives. I don't think we can realize how big of an impact this would have if Google just went poof for a week. Even though I'm not a fan of their tracking and other things, they really are a big part of the internet.

[casro]

I've been disconnecting from Google, because they're freakin' creepy. Plus I disapprove of some of their politics.

I use a paid email provider (Fastmail) for email, primarily Duck Duck Go for search, my servers are either VMs or a non-Google VPS, and I'm even looking for a good alternative to the otherwise-excellent Google Voice for phone.

About the only place they still have an almost irreplaceable lead is maps; Bing, Apple Maps, and the like really just aren't as good IMO.

I've completed the transition. 100% free of Google services for abour four years now.

I've been disconnecting from Google, because they're freakin' creepy. Plus I disapprove of some of their politics.

You and me both!

If their search went down it would take down other search engines that use their DB, like DuckDuckGo. If their cloud services went down it would drop a lot of websites. Same goes for Amazon, who hosts a ton of websites in AWS. Both would also drop business services for clients that have moved from on prem to the cloud. It would be a mess at first, with lasting effects for months.

But then it would be better. Fuck a bunch of Google (Alphabet). They are one of the companies (along with Amazon) most likely to bring about the distopian future we see in so many works of fiction.

Yep, I have everything setup to use DuckDuckGo exclusively.

I have a network-wide google blocker meaning no requests are allowed to reach any of Google know IPs. It breaks some sites here and there, you loose a banner, some layout may get weird, but for most part internet survives.

I run my own "cloud" server so I'm not affected.

Me too. Hosting owncloud in a RaspberryPI over here.

I've been disconnecting from Google, because they're freakin' creepy. Plus I disapprove of some of their politics.

You and me both!

If their search went down it would take down other search engines that use their DB, like DuckDuckGo.

FWIW, DDG also has their own crawler as well as pulling data from non-Google engines; I know Bing and Wolfram Alpha, at least.

As for the websites that use Google (Amazon, MS, whoever) in mission-critical ways...in a way, I hope that goes pfft. I can see offering a common login, but websites that depend on it are IMO pretty dumb, and I don't see a real benefit to canvas trackers/cross-site scripting/etc. Host your own scripts, lazyasses. :p

Security wise, having a common login is security/privacy suicide. You should never use a service to hold your account for everything else.

I have one unique login associated to an unique password everywhere I go.

If you go to https://haveibeenpwned.com/ and search any email, you may find which leaked database has compromised your credentials. You run a Tor Search for it and the use any online dehash tool to find the plain text password (when they are not published in clear text in the first place).

As soon as it'd done it's matter of testing those credentials against all major sites e.g. google, amazon, ebay, craiglist, netflix, icloud, etc. 9/10 you get lucky because people always recicle credentials.

Just download a password manager to generate unique user/pass to maintain peace of mind. I like keepass but there are others much more user friendly like lastpass, dashlane or whatever.

I myself use the services of 33mail. It creates infinite email aliases. As an added benefit, whenever I get a SPAM from thatbusinessacrossthescreet@mydomain.com I know for sure who has compromised my data. Sometimes I reach out to these shady businesses for the fun of it with evidence of their leaks. I hear all funny excuses and promises, pretty amusing.

All of my bills are on autopay (thanks ADHD) so I wouldn't be too worried, also most of my 2fa (two-factor authorization) goes through text to my phone. If those networks are down there are some bigger issues to deal with. In 18 years of having various cellphones I've only had one stolen from me, the rest all survived in my possession with only one cracked but still working screen.

If I were you I'd be careful with SMS 2FA. I tend to be away from it.

Let's say your mobile is pick-pocketed. People can remove your SIM to find your mobile number and run phone to mail association search with free search tools known as OSINT (open source intelligence tools).

Then it's a matter of reclaiming your password and getting a text straight on the stolen GSM card. Having your iPhone/Android locked obviously does not protect you from this technique. Worse, it can sometimes be used to access your cloud backup, hardware restore your phone without the locking code (apple devices nukes the data after 10 incorrect attempts) and retrieve the backup effectively rebuilding the phone without the locking code.

Either use a tool like Authy for 2FA or access your phone settings to setup a PIN code for your card. After 3 or 4 attempts the SIM usually is blocked.

[casro]

Google's failure as a search engine function would not be a disaster.

However as you noted they supply a lot of back office services.They along with Amazon and Microsoft form a huge part of the IT backbones in the small business world. Which IMO is fucking scary in and of itself. We worry about the .gov reading our correspondence but these organizations have both access and the ability to scan all comms going in and out of their email servers. this provides them with a unprecidented level of access to insider business information.

In my office we use both google email servers and microsoft office online for different businesses.

This is true. My organization scans our emails. I don't oppose, I actually find it necessary as there are ill intended folks out there capable of bringing down serious businesses just because they can. Inside job is pain.

I however keep an encrypted Virtual Machine in my computer from where I reach internet using an encrypted VPN tunnel. Funny story about it though. One of these VMs got corrupted and I had a bitcoin wallet stored there. With no backups!!! After months of attempting every known technique to decrypt it, all hope was lost and many bitcoin funds were gone with the wind forever and ever. Sad days.

We worry about the .gov reading our correspondence but these organizations have both access and the ability to scan all comms going in and out of their email servers. this provides them with a unprecidented level of access to insider business information.

Back when I was in the oil industry we weren't allowed to Google any information that we were using to develop new technology. The belief was Google was watching what search terms scientists were using and would jump in with possible patents on the technology before we could submit patents ourselves.
-Blast

I've heard of people getting job offers from Google based on what they were searching for. If they were developing a skill set Google wanted, a little thing like "privacy" wouldn't stand in the way.

Yes, Google watches search terms and actively reads your own email content in order to better offer your tailored ads. They were recently forced to admit as much. According to them, only a couple of folks read your emails for the sake of improving their machine learning algorithms.

My organization does not allow usage of google translation tools or similar. We may be inadvertently sending important data to them.

When a company, person, .gov has both access to AND the ability to read everyone's e-mail traffic, there is no way they could resist that temptation.

At one time I was less concerned about since the volume of traffic basically defied the ability to screen it. Now however even with a massive jump in volume the introduction of AI will remove that obstacle completely in a very short time.

I was recently surprised by the extent of the capability that exists now. I bought a burner phone for 2 party authentification purposes. I wanted a separate phone simply to receive verification texts. So bought a simple flip phone from Tracphone for $.01 and 90 days of text services via a instore purchase of the time. I paid cash and simply registered it without a name or CC.

I entered the phone number for Amazon, Gmail and a business bank account as the # to text with the digital code for access. I keep it turned off when not in use. I have never made a phone call or sent a text. It is for incoming texts only.

In less than 2 weeks it was receiving spam texts directed to me by name. Clearly the Tracphone Group worked with Amazon and Google to sell my data and this phone #.

I do the same. I have dumb dual-sim phones at home from different carriers to serve as text receiving devices, providing contact to stores that must call you to verify you are you for whatever reason and.... because prepping... in case my preferred carrier goes down I have a second an third carried options as backups.

In my country you are demanded to link your identify to your number whenever you activate a SIM card. I just buy SIM-cards used from craigslist-like sites ensuring they have already been activated previously by whoever.

Btw, I live far far away from residential areas and don't get a decent reception. I had to install an antenna and some sort of rural GSM radio station connected to a transceiver at home in order to boost my signal. This gadget is a black box but comes with a serial port (RS232). Out of curiosity I was able to read its data stream and can clearly see tower IDs and mobile device broadcasts (trying to authenticate to a certain carrier) including their signal strength in DB.

I guess if I was to spread three of these in a triangular area I could move towards you as per the DB variation eventually pin pointing your actual location.

In aliexpress or other chinese sites I've seen boxes that would work as an antenna boosting a signal so strong that nearby phones would prefer connecting to it. I remember there is a name for such boxes and they are a security problem to government buildings at US.

That was all to tell you, you are more than smart in keeping these 'private' GSM devices off.

I've heard of people getting job offers from Google based on what they were searching for. If they were developing a skill set Google wanted, a little thing like "privacy" wouldn't stand in the way.

Interesting! Hmmm, maybe it's time to write an automated Google search script that scans for Google technology news and then auto-searches those terms...
-Blast

Yes, this is absolutely not a myth. Any web designer can retrieve the same information from google in order to tailor the information they want to provide you.

One example is LinkedIn. They used to rely on google engines in order to show suited job positions suited to your profile. You can also embed in your site facebook aggregators as well. Or a bunch of them for that matter.

If you want to see how that works, download a browser add-on for chrome, Mozilla or whatever you are using called NOSCRIPT: https://noscript.net/

Leave it on and browse as usual. The majority of sites you visit will get broken because per default no-script blocks every javascript including google's. In time you'll allow some domains for those sites you trust and keep those you don't unblocked.

Not having google whitelisted will change the way internet looks to you. For instance, you may access linked and get the crazies job offer because their algorithms cannot read the cookies your browser stores with the information about where you've been, sites you visited, products you searched for, so on.

While we all would move to other search engines if Google went down, like DuckDuckGo, Bing, Yahoo, Searx..., we have to realize that Google is just not a search engine. They have news, photos, YouTube, Email, and so many more things. Think about all of the websites that you go to with Google Captchas. And did you know that Google has trackers installed on 75% of the top million internet websites?

So many websites come to rely on Google for operation, if they went down a big chunk of the internet would go down with it until developers could go in and disable those connections or move to other alternatives. I don't think we can realize how big of an impact this would have if Google just went poof for a week. Even though I'm not a fan of their tracking and other things, they really are a big part of the internet.

I have a tool https://pi-hole.net/ deployed in my network working as an ad-blocker. Google is blocked there therefore every single request from any machines at my home directed at google, aren't allow to leave.

It breaks a site or two, but I don't care. I rather not access whatever site as I choose to decide which companies I trust my data with.

That been said, youtube is a problem

I couldn't convince my wife to search her stuff at Vimeo instead. The quality of content uploaded to Youtube is unmatched.

As a solution I have two networks at home. One for every device which is protected by a VPN sending our requests all over the globe before redirecting to their intended destinations.

Another wired network for media only (youtube, netflix, amazon video, etc) to avoid seeing videos in dutch or cantonese

[MPMalloy]

So would CHrome & Android be creepy as well, given who sired them?

[boskone]

So would CHrome & Android be creepy as well, given who sired them?

Yup, and Chrome OS. Of course, Windows 10 and MacOS Big Sur tattle home now as well, to some degree. And websites use tracking cookies and canvas fingerprinting.

Maintaining internet security, even to the best degree possible (which is far from absolute) is a pain.

[casro]

For those unwilling to go deep into the rabbit hole, a pretty user friendly safer than standard browser is Brave. It's basically a Chrome build however with a lot of safety settings implemented. My wife uses it without any difficulties: https://brave.com/

[MPMalloy]

For those unwilling to go deep into the rabbit hole, a pretty user friendly safer than standard browser is Brave. It's basically a Chrome build however with a lot of safety settings implemented. My wife uses it without any difficulties: https://brave.com/

So, Chrome = creepy; Chromium - not so?

[casro]

For those unwilling to go deep into the rabbit hole, a pretty user friendly safer than standard browser is Brave. It's basically a Chrome build however with a lot of safety settings implemented. My wife uses it without any difficulties: https://brave.com/

So, Chrome = creepy; Chromium - not so?

I assume you're talking about Chrome vs Brave, right?

If so, that's not the point of Brave recommendations. Brave is an out of the box package with reasonable hardening. It is not ideal in my opinion, but it is as good as possible for people not wanting to go hardcore with security.

You can obviously turn Chrome into Brave. However you'll have to download, install and tune several add-ons. In a nutshell, Brave is a mildly hardened Chrome.

I use Firefox with extreme privacy/security settings. Sometimes it is a big hassle. Depending on the mechanisms used by certain webapps the page will simply not function properly. My firefox blocks so much stuff I have to whitelist external calls one by one in a trial error basis. Sometimes not even then I manage to get stuff working. For that I keep an unsafe browser in a Linux VM as last resort. Booking flight tickets for instance is very difficult with my over the top hardened firefox.

Brave avoids that. It goes only as far as not breaking things.

[MPMalloy]

For those unwilling to go deep into the rabbit hole, a pretty user friendly safer than standard browser is Brave. It's basically a Chrome build however with a lot of safety settings implemented. My wife uses it without any difficulties: https://brave.com/

So, Chrome = creepy; Chromium - not so?

I assume you're talking about Chrome vs Brave, right?

If so, that's not the point of Brave recommendations. Brave is an out of the box package with reasonable hardening. It is not ideal in my opinion, but it is as good as possible for people not wanting to go hardcore with security.

You can obviously turn Chrome into Brave. However you'll have to download, install and tune several add-ons. In a nutshell, Brave is a mildly hardened Chrome.

I use Firefox with extreme privacy/security settings. Sometimes it is a big hassle. Depending on the mechanisms used by certain webapps the page will simply not function properly. My firefox blocks so much stuff I have to whitelist external calls one by one in a trial error basis. Sometimes not even then I manage to get stuff working. For that I keep an unsafe browser in a Linux VM as last resort. Booking flight tickets for instance is very difficult with my over the top hardened firefox.

Brave avoids that. It goes only as far as not breaking things.

Thank you