Google Traffic Takes Down Web Site

bazonkers writes "Searchenginelowdown.com reports that it appears that the Google logo yesterday (honoring Gaston Julia) linked to the Google image search results for the words 'julia fractal'. The resulting traffic generated from clicking on that 'featured logo' incapacitated the servers of the top-listed images, hosted at an Australian university. This more than inconvenienced the owners of that site, who had to move pages and ended up displaying this page instead."

Yeah

[Dutchy Wutchy]

Looks like no one has heard of /.

Slashdot Effect now

[RoadkillBunny]

You guys are mean. First they the googled and now they get slashdoted....

Insult to Injury

[DarkHelmet]

Oh beautiful!

Let's add slashdot to our list of sites DDOSing us!

Wow, you Slashdot Editors like kicking people while they're down, huh?

And while we're at it, why not make the file redirect to www.sco.com? Oh wait... that's been done.

Obligatory...

[goldspider]

...and this sort of thing is news on SLASHDOT???

I wonder how you abbreviate that

[Daverd]

So if a Slashdotting is abbreviated as "/.ed", I guess this site was 100000000000000000... well you get the point.

google did it yesterday . ..

[nil5]

leave it to slashdot to do it again today with monster truck force!!

Damn

[Raul654]

I was just about to point out the same thing. Oh well... I think I'll go and reload the site a couple more times, just to rub it in.

Of course...

[Anonymous Coward]

The resulting traffic generated from clicking on that 'featured logo' incapacitated the servers of the top-listed images, hosted at an Australian university. This more than inconvenienced the owners of that site...

So, naturally, let's post them on the front page of Slashdot.

Smooth.

Yikes!

[Blue Eagle 26]

Yikes! Gives a whole new meaning to the term "google bombing"

TEHE

[llZENll]

HAHA, maybe /. and G00GLE can do a tag team on them again. Can you feel that? Huh, Huh?

'click'

Re:Damn

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh well... I think I'll go and reload the site a couple more times, just to rub it in.

Reading the article? You're new here, aren't you?

Re:Slashdot Effect now

[CeleronXL]

Yeah, it'll be nice when they make another alt page against Slashdot.. and then it makes Slashdot news again. =)

I love it

[RoboProg]

Upon reading the article heading, my first thought was also "Oh great, now they're gonna get a whooping from slashdot as well!", but, of course, the first N-teen posts are all the same thing. So, "AOL!" to you all!

No fair, guys, April is almost 2 months away....

News flash

[savagedome]

And while reporting incapacitated australian univ servers on slashdot, Searchenginelowdown.com is being hosted on a new site called Searchenginedown.com

Hey Rock!

[Atario]

Watch me pull a fractal outta my hat!

[Servers exploding in Australia]

Oops! Looks like I don't know m'own strenth!

The Kipper and the Corpse:

[bstadil]

Reminds me of the scene from Fawlty Towers the The Kipper and the Corpse:

Miss Gatsby: You're very cheerful this morning, Mr Fawlty.

Basil: (cheerfully) Yes, well one of the guests has just died.

(Polly slaps Miss Tibbs, who folds up and falls to the floor)

Basil: (to Polly) Oh, spiffing! Absolutely spiffing. Well done! Two dead, twenty five to go.

Using my time machine ....

[Dukael_Mikakis]

Here's the full text from the website tomorrow:

Browsing Slashdot?

Looking for the page complaining about Google?

On the 4rd of February 2004, this page (or rather the page that was here) was swamped by requests and the server subsequentially failed. The reason was traced to Slashdot(see image below) posting an article about a webpage about Google posting an image about fractals, which when clicked accessed our web page. The link went directly to a page about google (or rather the page that was here).

[Image used without permission from Slashdot]

In order to get this server functional again, the page that was here has been moved somewhere else. It shouldn't be too hard to find it if you really want to, do a Google search for "Using google fractal" or if you would like to complain more about google try googlewatch [googlewatch.com].

Please note that this is not a criticism of Slashdot or nerd but rather an interesting dimension to the power they wield. They have hundreds (thousands?) of members worldwide that distribute their traffic load. If even a small percentage of that traffic is directed to a single server.....what chance does it have?

Questions: Should Slashdot ask permission before potentially sending huge traffic loads to a single page/server? Should they regulate traffic to individual sites/pages by allowing accesses by karma? Why do so few of them have girlfriends?
Happy slashdotting!

Slashdot nerdeth
and Google geeketh away
Blessed is the dork?

That's messed up.

[lasmith05]

First google takes them down, then slashdot. Someone must really not like fractals. :)

Farked too

[zjbs14]

The Google page was listed on Fark yesterday. So that site has been: 1. Googled 2. Farked 3. Now /.'ed The unintentional DDoS trifecta!

but Googles doesn't know Gaston Julia

[Dreadlord]

Weird, I've tried to see what Google knows [googlism.com] about Gaston Julia, it turned out that Google doesn't actually know him. [googlism.com]

Cough up some money fast or...

[jigyasubalak]

we feature you as a logo.
Looks like google doesn't need an IPO, after all ;)

Re:I love it

[Bombcar]

I think slashdot is not happy with this. If google becomes the new standard for website destruction, what will slashdot do?

It could be argued that the only value left in slashdot is the ability to destroy entire webservers with a single post......

This proves it.

[teamhasnoi]

Slashdot is a big wuss compared to Google. [googlefight.com]

C'mon you geeks! Take off those pocket protectors and put on the gloves! Google's callin' you out!

Re:Farked too

[Dukael_Mikakis]

Now if only booble [booble.com] had an excuse to link to them ...

If we only had their numbers

[2eris3]

Then you would see what a /. -ing could really do!

Re:I wonder how you abbreviate that

[0racle]

googleplexed

Much easier to pronounce.

Would the world melt...

[Rick Zeman]

...if google linked to slashdot like that? I mean, what would we call that? A slashgle? A googdot'ing? :-)

Re:Can we set up a competition? Can it be measured

[Migrant Programmer]

We can rely on the highly scientific Googlefight system.

Slashdot vs. Google [googlefight.com] - Winner: Google

Slashdotted vs. Googled [googlefight.com] - Winner: Googled

Clearly, Google is superior and far more dangerous.

Linkage

[TitusC3v5]

The resulting traffic generated from clicking on that 'featured logo' incapacitated the servers of the top-listed images, hosted at an Australian university. This more than inconvenienced the owners of that site, who had to move pages and ended up displaying this page instead."

*clicks on the link*
*waits*
*for awhile*

Oh, the irony...

Deathmatch

[vikstar]

I would like to see Google create a link from the main "Google" picture to Slashdot, and at the same time get Slashdot to write a post about it linking to the Google site, and see who's servers drown first.

Re:Boob search

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's just hope this ups the ante for attention-starved celebs everywhere, starting with the Grammy Awards. I'm talking to you, Britney.

Sorry dude, it's a well-known fact that Britney Spears reads slashdot at +4

Re:Slashdot Effect now

[xoran99]

Yeah, it'll be nice when they make another alt page against Slashdot.. and then it makes Slashdot news again. =)

How fitting... This important work by Julia is all about recursion... :P

patent

[darkain]

why not sue google for infringing on slashdots patent for taking down web servers?

Re:Damn

[litheum]

damn, you're good! you didn't even realize that there isn't any "article" at all!

OMG!

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a... no, it's already a cluster.

I, for one, welc... damn, that doesn't work either: Google's already a God.

In soviet r... shit!! it doesn't work the other way around!

Formula for success:
1. Create interesting website about fractals.
2. Put it on the internet on the day Google honours Gaston Julia.
3. Prof... FUCK, there's no money to be made there, plus I didn't use the "???" step!

I give up.

who needs the slashdot effect?

[BlueWire]

...we have a new definition of google-wack

Re:International bandwidth crunch?

[karnal]

I was just thinking the same thing.

I'm a little small *down there*. But I'm not that small..... :)

Re:Hey Rock!

[Trolling4Dollars]

Damn I'd love to see someone render that in 3D:

Bullwinkle says the above intro phrase followed by raching deep into his hat and pulls out a 3D rendering of one of the Julias. Along with it is an ethernet cable with a small server dangling from it stamped with the URL. Dangling from the server is... the power cord. And of course the server is smoking and has sparks flying from it. Then Bullwinkle makes the punchline.

Re:Damn

[caino59]

shift+F5 baby...oh yea...

Re:Should Google try to convert its traffic to mon

[Hobobo]

The slippery slope [datanation.com], eh? That sure is, (sarcasm), valid reasoning.

Slashdot Rubbernecking

[MuParadigm]

Oh, the Irony.

First Google slashdots a site on recursive fractionated geometry, then the Slashdot editors invite the whole community to rubberneck.

Re:Slashdot Effect now

[martin-boundary]

Yeah, Slashdot knows about duplication allright!

Re:I love it

[zeroprime]

Simple. We /. google.

Re:Slashdot Effect now

[terradyn]

Actually... The image they have on their page of the fractal google image is hosted off google australia... so in reality they are actually trying to slashdot google... Revenge is sweet... If one day google puts slashdot on the front page, would we have a grudge match between google and slashdot for world dominance? :)

Re:Slashdot Effect now

[nomadic]

Wait until the series of duplicate stories...

Re:I love it

[InfoVore]

It could be argued that the only value left in slashdot is the ability to destroy entire webservers with a single post......

faster than a speeding popup...

more powerful than a Beowulf cluster of those...

able to destroy entire webservers with a single link..

Its Super Slashdot!

Sorry, Mr. Mxyzptlk made me do it. Cheers.

Re:Slashdot Effect now

[Fnkmaster]

I am so confused. Are we googling slashdot or slashdotting google? AAaAHHH! This verbing of nouns shall not stand!

Simple...

[Cyno01]

Get Google to buy OSDN and Fark, add a boobies section to /. and unleash the most powerful force the internet has ever seen... Will make mydoom look like a prank on a high school network.

trends...

[TachyonAT]

OMG Google is like the new Slashdot!!! (imagine snotty teenager voice)

Re:I love it

[ThaReetLad]

I don't know about a trademark, but perhaps /. could patent it as a business method?

So what is this called?

[Snaller]

Googledotting?

Re:I love it

[jag164]

I disagree. 'Googled' can take on various meanings. It's really all about inflection.

I got fucked (Someone who had a bad day at the courthhouse)
I got fucked (Someone who had a good day in the back seat of mom and dad's car)
We've been googled. (High School science olymipic team)
We've been googled. (www.state.ak.us web admins when Alaska turns 50 years old)

Re:I love it

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a website is insignificant next to the power of the Force.