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."

Ahh yes...

[Raynach]

... the site hosting the image that good stole has failed, so the backup gets slashdotted instead!

I mean, really, use some common sense here...

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

[soren42]

I wonder who generates more traffic, google or slashdot... Google has far more traffic, I'm certain, but Slashdotters travel very specific links.

What's more dangerous to your bandwidth - top link on a google doodle or a slashdotting?

Re:Should Google try to convert its traffic to mon

[MrRTFM]

No.

Because that would be the first step down the slipperly slope into a full blown portal with weather, news, horoscopes, blah, blah, blah.

Keep it clean and simple, or they will no longer be the number one

pretty cool response they had

[Anonymous Coward]

By phrasing the issue in a shape of a question rather than just complaining about it they really gained my respect and admiration.

Some people understand that the purpose of a university (or any educator really) is to provoke thought and to impart knowledge and information. But also to let the end user (usually a student) draw their own conclusions.

The way the page is phrased makes me think that the person behind it - even supposing I didn't know he works with fractals - is one cool guy and probably a really awesome professor.

Re:Insult to Injury

[00420]

Should we have a guilty conscience for bring down servers as wantonly as we do? I think not, as the Internet is open and free and who's going to stop us

The fact that somebody can stop you is not what makes something bad.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying bringing down servers is a horrible thing, I'm just saying your argument sucks.

This was partially my fault.

[Awptimus Prime]

I spent a good part of my afternoon visiting pages linked to that google logo. The first page of results was so slow, and half the links were timing out.

I wondered why they didn't just return random results from the first 20-30 pages of links. That would have seemed more respectful to the poor bastards running sites off freebie dial-up and university hosting accounts.

Re:Oh mighty Google...

[Petrol]

It has always been my understanding that the *search* site Google in in the search engine business. I have never once seen Google assert that they are in the content business.

FYI, whenever they run a commemorative logo, it only points to a search on that subject (because they're a search engine..., get it?)

Re:*sigh*

[LostCluster]

Yes, but Google gave no warning that the number of searches on the term "juila fractal" was about to suddenly spike because of a hyperlink placed on a Google Doodle. People who wanted a trickle of traffic from Google got a flood.

Re:Insult to Injury

[the_mad_poster]

I think not, as the Internet is open and free and who's going to stop us, but it's an interesting point they raise.

Technically speaking, there are a lot of immoral things that nobody is going to stop you from doing. If a kid hits their ball in your yard, you can just keep the gate locked and throw the ball in the trash. Doesn't mean it's right (unless they're doing it just to irritate you or something).

Some netizens don't like to admit the fact, but there is a certain level of responsibility that you need to have to partake in the Internet. Everyone is expected to do their fair share to keep things running, but a lot of people shirk that and just run rampant over everyone else. From networks bogged down by bandwidth hogs stealing movies and music to spammers to Slashdot, some people insist on just wantonly snatching everything they can grab and running for the hills.

Is anyone going to stop you? No, of course not. However, after awhile, you'll be left with nothing else to grab because nobody will see any value in providing anything for anyone else. Make it a hassle for people to give you stuff for free, and they just won't give it to you anymore.

Re:Should Google try to convert its traffic to mon

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, Google should try to sell ads. I'm sure your post is resonating with the execs over at Google right now. What insight you have thinking of marrying ADVERTISING with WEBPAGE HITS. Wow! You could be an Internet Mogol ... in 1994, maybe.

(You do know that Google does sell ads, right? I didn't think so.)

Oh, I did catch the "home page" suggestion -- why on earth would Google want to muck with their branding, identity and clean interface by plugging some other entity on the index page? You do realize that most, if not all, Google vistors will enter a query and view a second page that will contain TARGETED ads, which are vastly more popular than generic ads that appear on, say, HOME PAGES.

Re:Should Google try to convert its traffic to mon

[Neurotoxic666]

just how much money could Google make if they sold just a small ad on their home page

But then, would it still be Google?

A matter of perspective

[corian]

This more than inconvenienced the owners of that site, who had to move pages and ended up displaying this page instead."

On the other hand, you could say that it benefited the owners of the site. After all, people were interested enough in fractals and/or Julia (or just the picture they saw), to follow up and seek out more information. Isn't the purposes of those sites to provide information to people interested in fractals?

Chances are, people who found the sites down will follow up the same links today or tomorrow to read more about fractals. Ultimately, it will increase traffic (and interest) to those sites. Thats's a good thing.

Re:Should Google try to convert its traffic to mon

[IMSoP]

What's more, a lot of users (myself included) by-pass the homepage completely, and go straight to a search using various nifty tools - from forms on 3rd-party websites [slashdot.org] to search toolbars [google.com] to bookmarklets [google.com] and other browser tricks [google.com]. So adverts on the front page would probably get less hits than the ones on the searches.

Re:New service: Google CachePlus?

[rustycage]

Wouldn't that kind of be like blackmail?
Buy our service or we will shut down your site. Not sure folks are going to be real happy about that.

Re:Of course...

[descil]

Try to appreciate the art in this.
Gaston Julia revelled in repeating patterns. He found them beautiful.
The people at this Australian university must love repeating patterns as well.
Slashdot is just repeating a pattern. It's art.

Pizza Overload

[Anonymous Coward]

When I worked summers up on Cape Cod Mass at a family-owned pizza shop, a couple times during the summer we'd have the /. pizza effect -- the local sea camps would call in an order for 200 pizzas, or a couple of tour busses would pull in the lot with 100 hungry riders.

Did they call in advance? Did they ask permission to swamp us? Did we redirect them out the door and decline their order? Of course not. Variability in demand is a part of business.

The same goes for the half-dozen toys that Time Magazine says are the hot Christmas items, which suddenly disappear from the shelves. Should shoppers be restricted from buying them in order to maintain a few on the shelves?

Suddenly popular websites have the same consequence to the consumer - unavailability of supply. People find alternatives, come back later, etc.

So am I missing something dramatically new here?

Re:Insult to Injury

[s20451]

If a kid hits their ball in your yard, you can just keep the gate locked and throw the ball in the trash.

Good point, and I agree with your post, but I think it goes deeper than that. Here we have two big internet engines (Google and Slashdot) piling hits on small research servers that can't take them. You can make the case that this is the net equivalent of a major corporation dumping toxic waste -- or some similar "big guy dumps on little guy" analogy. In your example, throwing out the ball is likely to get your house egged. But what leverage do you have to force Slashdot to be a good net citizen? Arguably very little.

Re:Wrong? no!

[Quill_28]

I would disagree. At least somewhat.

People put things on their sites, so people can see, but most folks don't want everyone to see.

I have pictures of my newborn boy on the web. I want certain people to see these pics but would prefer no one else.

What options do I have? Password protect them? Not realistic.

Rather, I figure no one is interested in these pics so no one will bother.

But many times slashdot posts a article knowing it will kill the site. Not very nice in my book.

Re:*sigh*

[sugar and acid]

Except under normal circumstances the website wants to be indexed. This is an issue about what is the right policy for linking to a website from a mega traffic site, not if they should be indexed or not. If 100 people type that word combo in a day because they are actually interested in the subject and want to learn more, not a problem. But directing the huge userbase of google with one click on an alluring logo banner to the same search page, thats nothing that could be expected or designed for.

I think it is a severe problem which Slashdot and Google don't want to deal with. I have had atleast 2 website I wanted to submit as a slashdot story but didn't because they were private websites without any financial, and without the capacity to handle the load. One inparticular was already under financial strain because of bandwith bills, a slashdoting would have ended it there and then. In that case it is better to leave it for people actually interested in the topic and are willing to find it on their own than to sacrifice the poor website to slashdot.

Re:Insult to Injury

[Bill_Royle]

Agreed. What would the harm have been to wait and put this on the next Slashback? Slashbacks tend to generate a bit less traffic to the target site, but they cover the story effectively.

Sorry, but as someone who's experienced several slashdottings, I can attest to the fact that a Slashdotting can be a pain to manage on it's own. It's always fun, but it sometimes takes a lot of work to keep things going. Considering that these folks had just gotten buried by Google searchers, it seems like kind of a dick thing to do to then submit them to a Slashdotting. How hard is it for a Slashdot editor to send an email to the site administrator asking if they're ready for a Slashdotting? I'm not saying in all cases - but in a case like this, it just seems like the right thing to do.

Slashdot exists because of other sites, and operates as a forum essentially for the exchange of ideas. It should respect the maintainers of websites - after all, they're what makes Slashdot what it is!

Re:Pizza Overload

[the_mad_poster]

Yes, actually - the Internet doesn't fit into the typical capitalist mold. The web fits fairly well now that marketroids have utterly mangled it, but the Internet as a whole doesn't, and certainly nice resources that are offering free information don't.

It would be more analgous to someone pinning up a "free food" flyer all over town for a soup kitchen and all sorts of people flooding the place whether they need to or not. On top of that, there are a lot of Slashdot readers here, myself soon to be included, who could easily mirror content to help divert some of the load. It wouldn't take that much extra effort to have people sign up to post mirrors of sites or to post a Google cache, etc. instead of just crushing some poor guy's webserver who just wanted to share a spiffy project he did with the world. Slashdotting some poor guy who did something neat just because nobody could be bothered to ask someone to set up a mirror is just plain rotten - ESPECIALLY when THEY'RE footing the bill and getting no return.

Re:Insult to Injury

[FsG]

but are there moral implications for overloading a perfectly innocent site

Oh, boo hoo. Any webmaster worthy of that title would have anticipated this possibility, and done something to handle it. Options range from using mod_bandwidth [cohprog.com] (or similar tools at the firewall level) to finely control how many people can access the server at once, to using a script to block any specific referrer once they send you 10000+ hits in one day (or redirect them to everyone's favorite site). Better yet, set up a Google adwords account beforehand and become a millionaire off the Google-dotting.

This won't stop the server from getting hammered with requests, but it will help significantly, as each request will be limited to however many bytes it takes to drop a TCP connection.

So instead of Google...

[pinqkandi]

...we'll just Slashdot it instead.

This is not a Google problem, it's a bug problem

[BeforeCoffee]

So the replacement page reads ... "On the 3rd of February 2004, this page (or rather the page that was here) was swamped by requests and the server subsequentially failed."

I run a website on my home DSL with a store bought router and Linux. Whether that was a redundant T3 or plain ol' DSL, it shouldn't matter: if my poor underpowered server is getting too much traffic due to Slashdot or Google, IT SHOULD NOT EVER ACTUALLY "FAIL"! What, did the Julia ethernet port just start shooting flames? Did the harddrive platters melt? They are describing a software bug!

What in the Julia server people's hardware, router firmware, OS kernel, web server, Java VM, or Java App Server that caused the fault? Whichever vendor is to blame should be identified, taken out back, and given a paddling! (And if the Julia people are running IIS, then, of course, *they* deserve to be paddled because they screwed up on a fractal level.)

In my opinion, if my site got slashdotted, I should hope to return home and see all blinky lights normal (with only my DSL bandwidth jacked up to holy hell).

How do we get these internet infrastructure people (hardware, firmware, and software) to butch up our systems? Is anyone measuring the points of failure on average webservers under extreme load and then working to fix the problems?

Davester

Now they have a slashdot page

[kidgenius]

Slashdotted too! [swin.edu.au]

As they say, sure kicking someone when they are down. And I prefer this [googlefight.com] googlefight, seeing as how the Julia set site mentions "Googleblatted"

Re:Should Google try to convert its traffic to mon

[Bob Uhl]

Those of us who use a Real Browser [mozilla.org] don't see the Google main page anymore...

Terminology

[OSUJoe]

So... in the vain of "slashdotting" a site, should we call it "googling" a site? No, that's already the term you use when searching for a term... it would just end up being confusing. We could just re-appropriate the term "google-whacking"... but that term should stay the same, as well, for simplicity's sake. So then... it is necessary to make a new term. And there's really only one that will do.

That site's been google-spanked.

Re:Insult to Injury

[bugbread]

So only the technologically elite should be allowed to put up websites? Well, that knocks about 90% of the internet off the globe, leaving a bunch of corporate sites and a few sites of hardware reviews and Beowulf clusters. How fun...

suggestion to google

[real_smiff]

This is probably so obvious it's already been mentioned, but how about you (Google) mirror the first page of results you link to from the day's special banner? by default, rather than people having to think to use the google cache. You would of course need to mirror images or other large content. I don't know if there could be any legal problems with this but technicaly it should work and you'd only need to do it for a day.

Re:New service: Google CachePlus?

[TubeSteak]

people have already pointed out that's exactly what Akami does, but there's also something else. If google got into this biz, they'd have to start juding matters of taste and acceptability. Up till now thats pretty much a road they haven't had to walk.

Re:Pizza Overload

[the_mad_poster]

We must have a lot of business managers here...

Everyone keeps acting as if the entire Internet is comprised of nothing but companies. The entire point of my two posts is that you can't treat the entire Internet that way like you can with a TV / Print / Radio medium. ANYONE can be heard on the Internet. Some people are just hanging out in their own little niche and they're NOT seeking heavy traffic like Amazon is. You want to direct huge amounts of unexpect traffic at Amazon? Fine (as long as it's not garbage traffic), I'm sure they'll be very grateful. However, some poor guy that has a little research server and just wants to share some information with passers by doesn't want that. He's not actively seeking a huge traffic glut and he's certainly NOT going to benefit from it.

The Internet doesn't function like the rest of the world has up until now. Trying to pound old, traditional ideas of a capitalist society into the Internet is like trying to pound square pegs into round holes. Typical capital-driven mediums are shallow and relatively one dimensional because they're all working toward a single goal and using the same general resources. The Internet is comprised of all sort of people with all sorts of different goals using all sorts of different means. You can't treat this poor guy's research server like it's Amazon.com . He doesn't have the same goals and he's not using the same resources to acheive his goals.

And, I hate to tell you, but from a company's perspective, monopoly is the ultimate goal in capitalist society. From a consumer's perspective, perfect oligarchy is the ultimate goal of a capitalist society. From an investor's perspective, perfect competition is the ultimate goal for a company. There's not one perfect situation for a company to be in from everybody's point of view within the framework of capitalism.

Re:Insult to Injury

[FsG]

Keep in mind that my original comment only applies to those who run web servers, not those who host websites. The point is if you're going to run your own web server, you'd better know what you're doing. If you don't, there are excellent hosting providers out there who will take care of everything for you. Needless to say, the client has to do the proper research and pick a provider that will do things in an acceptable way, whether that's throttling bandwidth usage or charging extra for it.

Whether you're the client or the admin, there is no excuse for ignorance.