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Google Traffic Takes Down Web Site 414

Posted by simoniker from the comparisons-inevitable dept.
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."
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Google Traffic Takes Down Web Site More

Google Traffic Takes Down Web Site

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  • Yeah (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dutchy Wutchy ( 547108 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:12PM (#8186069)
    Looks like no one has heard of /.

  • Slashdot Effect now (Score:4, Funny)

    by RoadkillBunny ( 662203 ) <roadkillbunny@msn.com> on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:12PM (#8186071)
    You guys are mean. First they the googled and now they get slashdoted....

  • Insult to Injury (Score:5, Funny)

    by DarkHelmet ( 120004 ) * <<ten.elcychtneves> <ta> <kram>> on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:12PM (#8186072) Homepage

    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.

    • Damn (Score:5, Funny)

      by Raul654 ( 453029 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:14PM (#8186093) Homepage
      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.

    • Re:Insult to Injury (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Dukael_Mikakis ( 686324 ) <andrewfoersterNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:18PM (#8186143)
      I hope /. doesn't lose its rep as the premiere internet stampede as people start referring to the "Google effect".

      Much as I enjoy perusing information (and I do follow the links), this does raise a good question. Obviously, it's generally a good thing for a website to get traffic (usually, that's why the website's there), but are there moral implications for overloading a perfectly innocent site (fortunately, this site seems academic, so we aren't hurting business, per se)? 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, but it's an interesting point they raise.

      Reminds me of when I served at a restaurant and managers would complain when business was slow, but they'd get equally upset if a couple of buses pulled in and we were slammed with 100+ customers all at once. With so many customers, it was tough for us to give them good service, much less take good care of the customers we already had. I guess the exposure Google (and /.) gives can be, as they say, as much a blessing as a curse.

      • Re:Insult to Injury (Score:5, Insightful)

        by 00420 ( 706558 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:27PM (#8186221)
        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.

      • Re:Insult to Injury (Score:5, Insightful)

        by the_mad_poster ( 640772 ) <shattoc@adelphia.com> on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:42PM (#8186343) Homepage Journal

        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.

        • Pizza Overload (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @10:16PM (#8186550)
          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:Pizza Overload (Score:5, Insightful)

            by the_mad_poster ( 640772 ) <shattoc@adelphia.com> on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @10:28PM (#8186626) Homepage Journal

            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:Pizza Overload (Score:4, Interesting)

              by 10101001 10101001 ( 732688 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @11:01PM (#8186780) Journal
              Sorry, but you're wrong. There's two major problems with what everyone has stated up to this point (include you). For starters, the web uses a protocol that's inherently master/slave based. Because of this, anyone who hosts a website has an inherent ability to offer traffic policing to customers to prevent costing exhorbants amount of money. Offering/not-offering this feature is a part of the free market system upon which capitalism is likely to gain customers. Even those companies who don't offer such a feature might begin offering a p2p solution to http (a mix of http and bittorrent, possibly). The second point is that you, yourself, use an isp of some kind. When you can't access a web site because of of a /.ing or a "google-ing", you're not getting everything out of the internet. Not only that, but the 20 or 40 requests an ISP gets to get a website is 20-40x more bandwidth than if the isp cached requests. So, in effect, there's an obvious market for isps who provide caching, not only because of the direct bandwidth savings for themselves but also through the marketing about being able to see /.ed sites (though I'm sure marketers can create a better buzz phrase). There's also traffic shaping/policing to encourage the use of their squid or other web proxy. So, in effect, there is an economic solution to the problem at hand. There's also the fault of the people who put up web pages that get /.ed, as they bitch and moan instead of trying to find a technological solution to the problem. A web server can be made into a p2p distribution system to handle the load instead of crapping out when it runs out of connections. And ISPs can benefit by marketing their caching technology (fact is, HD space + CPU power are still growing massively faster than bandwidth rates, so caching conceivably is to be the fastest for some time to come).

        • Re:Insult to Injury (Score:5, Insightful)

          by s20451 ( 410424 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @10:21PM (#8186585) Journal
          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:Insult to Injury (Score:5, Insightful)

        by FsG ( 648587 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @10:30PM (#8186639)
        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.

    • The Kipper and the Corpse: (Score:5, Funny)

      by bstadil ( 7110 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:27PM (#8186227) Homepage
      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.

    • Re:Insult to Injury (Score:4, Informative)

      by Kris_J ( 10111 ) * on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:41PM (#8186333) Homepage Journal
      Think that's bad? It's number 17 on Blogdex, and rising.
    • 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 dic

  • Obligatory... (Score:3, Funny)

    by goldspider ( 445116 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:13PM (#8186076) Homepage
    ...and this sort of thing is news on SLASHDOT???

  • I wonder how you abbreviate that (Score:3, Funny)

    by Daverd ( 641119 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:13PM (#8186085) Homepage
    So if a Slashdotting is abbreviated as "/.ed", I guess this site was 100000000000000000... well you get the point.

  • Oh mighty Google... (Score:5, Informative)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:13PM (#8186089)
    Google just proved that they aren't in the content business, just the search business. When Google made a rare and somewhat nonsensical editorial comment in the form of their modified logo, many people clicked the logo to see where it lead, and where it lead to was a Google image search that yeilded interesting results, so people clicked the images in the hope for information about Gaston Julia...

    Google should have written their own article explaining why they decided that Gaston Julia was worthy of being honored. Instead, they simply supplied a suggested search query and passed the curious users to sites who weren't expecting the rush... if Google had asked, I'm sure they would have been able to get an academic to write a decent page to satisfy the curious users, but Google seems to have underestimated the power they have...

    • Just look at Wikipedia (Score:3, Informative)

      by Raul654 ( 453029 )
      The article on Gaston Julia [wikipedia.org] got a LOT of edits [wikipedia.org] in the last two days.

    • Hey Rock! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Atario ( 673917 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:26PM (#8186217) Homepage
      Watch me pull a fractal outta my hat!

      [Servers exploding in Australia]

      Oops! Looks like I don't know m'own strenth!
      • 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:Oh mighty Google... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Petrol ( 18446 )
      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:Oh mighty Google... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Neurotoxic666 ( 679255 ) <neurotoxic666@hotma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:42PM (#8186347) Homepage
      but Google seems to have underestimated the power they have...

      Somehow, this is also what makes Google so great. They do not abuse their power. They just make things as simple as possible. Google is actualy no one and everyone all at once. Their "editorial" is what the world thinks of the fractal -- not what Google thinks of it.

      Personnaly, their omnipresence everywhere combined to their absence in what they provide is the reason why I use and preach Google.

  • Of course... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:14PM (#8186099)
    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.

  • Should Google try to convert its traffic to money? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:15PM (#8186115)
    Imagine just how much money could Google make if they sold just a small ad on their home page on a 24-hour basis occasionally, maybe even limited to modifying the Google logo in an agreed upon way linked to a page on the sponsoring site. http://www.google.com [google.com] has to be the most hit page on the planet right now, so such an ad would have awesome power and be able to command top dollar.

    Google's clearly taking the high road by making their home page an ad-page zone. I wonder how long that's going to last after the IPO and by definition, profit-hungry interests (such as your 401k plan) get control of the company.

  • Full text (Score:5, Informative)

    by trickycamel ( 696375 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:16PM (#8186122)
    Page already loading slow, here's the full text

    Using Google?

    Looking for images of quaternion fractals?

    On the 3rd 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 Google introducing a fractal looking logo (see below), which when clicked, performed an image search for "julia" and "fractal". The two most interesting resulting images on the top row of the list were on this page (or rather the page that was here).

    [Image used without permission from Google]

    In order to get this server functional again, the pages that were here have been moved somewhere else. It shouldn't be too hard to find them if you really want to, do a Google search for "Quaternion fractal" or if you would like to create your own Quaternion fractals try POVRay.

    Please note that this is not a criticism of Google but rather an interesting dimension to the power they wield. They have hundreds (thousands?) of servers 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 Google ask permission before potentially sending huge traffic loads to a single page/server? Should they regulate traffic to individual sites/pages by changing the order of the search results?
    Happy searching!

    Google giveth
    and Google taketh away
    Blessed is Google?
    [Roger Bagula]

    • Using my time machine .... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Dukael_Mikakis ( 686324 ) <andrewfoersterNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:28PM (#8186237)
      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?
      • Here's the actual text now:

        Using Google? (Reading Slashdot? The followup story)

        Looking for images of quaternion fractals?
        On the 3rd 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 Google introducing a fractal looking logo (see below), which when clicked, performed an image search for "julia" and "fractal". The two most interesting resulting images on the top row of the list were on this page (or ra

    • Re:Full text (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I have to wonder...

      Why does the author ask those questions?

      There's no facility on that page to respond, so it implies these questions are rhetorical -- leading to answers that are more favorable to the ill-prepared website.

      My response to these questions follow, if anyone's interested.

      Should Google ask permission before potentially sending huge traffic loads to a single page/server?

      No. If you don't want google to index your site, set up facilities to prevent it. Google shouldn't be held accounta

  • International bandwidth crunch? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:18PM (#8186139)
    The server in question, by domain name at least, seems to indicate that Google's USA homepage was directing viewers on a path that led to a server in Australia. Just wondering... did any of the trans-oceanic network links show any visible spikes in traffic as a result of this event?

  • Surprising (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Aneurysm ( 680045 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:18PM (#8186146)
    I'm a little surprised that this has never happened before, as they often have featured logos. I guess those fractals must have just looked too alluring, and people had to see them. Then again, i'm quite surprised that so many people click on the featured graphic, perhaps people who aren't familiar with Julia, and were interested in what the graphic meant?

  • Can we set up a competition? Can it be measured? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by soren42 ( 700305 ) * <j@nospam.son-kay.com> on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:19PM (#8186156) Homepage Journal
    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?

  • New service: Google CachePlus? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:20PM (#8186166)
    Google clearly has an international network of highly powered servers that have the ability to send out content via HTTP. Maybe Google could open up a side business for those who need a lot of web capacity fast for a short duration, for those who want to keep their websites up despite a major media mention that will quickly subside.

  • News flash (Score:5, Funny)

    by savagedome ( 742194 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:22PM (#8186173)
    And while reporting incapacitated australian univ servers on slashdot, Searchenginelowdown.com is being hosted on a new site called Searchenginedown.com

  • Could google slashdot slashdot? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by thopo ( 315128 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:24PM (#8186189)
    Let's assume that for an hour google secretely replaces all href's in all results to slashdot.org, could half the internet take down slashdot? That'd be an interesting thing to try.

  • Changing the picture (Score:3, Interesting)

    by shird ( 566377 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:25PM (#8186205) Homepage Journal
    Wouldn't it have been more fun to have changed the pictures? I thought google actually stored the thumbnails and served them up.

    If not, there are a various protections you can use to prevent the image being shown on another server (using the referrer is one, not particularly robust/compatible method) Many free websites use this method.

    If google doesn't store the thumbnail, then it is not the google servers hammering them (as the site claims) but all the users doing the search. Thus it is irrelevant of how many servers google has.

  • pretty cool response they had (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:25PM (#8186213)
    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.

  • This was partially my fault. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Awptimus Prime ( 695459 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:27PM (#8186222)
    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.
    • And not what makes them great. The reason Google is good is they return the most relivant results (as determined by their quite efficient engine) for any search, not random, the highest paying, etc. They do the same for things like their banner links.

      Part of posting content on a totally public, accessible forum like the Internet is teh knowledge that the big boys may take intrest in you at some point. You need to accept and deal with that. I've had servers I own or maintained hit by a lot of people before

  • Farked too (Score:5, Funny)

    by zjbs14 ( 549864 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:28PM (#8186240) Homepage
    The Google page was listed on Fark yesterday. So that site has been: 1. Googled 2. Farked 3. Now /.'ed The unintentional DDoS trifecta!

  • Cough up some money fast or... (Score:3, Funny)

    by jigyasubalak ( 308473 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:30PM (#8186261)
    we feature you as a logo.
    Looks like google doesn't need an IPO, after all ;)

  • This proves it. (Score:5, Funny)

    by teamhasnoi ( 554944 ) <teamhasnoi@[ ]oo.com ['yah' in gap]> on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:35PM (#8186289) Journal
    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!

  • Just the leftovers caused me trouble (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fractalus ( 322043 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:38PM (#8186311) Homepage
    I run a fractal-related site, and just the leftovers from people clicking through to sites that had links to my site was enough to give me 10x the traffic. I had calls from my host and a few other problems, so I took the web sites down for a few hours while trying to help some other folks figure out what was going on.

    I've been slashdotted four times or so before, so I know what it's like. The server handled it just fine, it was the connection that was the trouble.

    I'm glad that the initial onslaught is over, but I'm still seeing elevated traffic levels, and probably will for a few days. This is normal for any kind of slashdotting.

  • Boob search (Score:3, Informative)

    by nucal ( 561664 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:48PM (#8186382)
    Although those fractal folks got Google-dotted (or whatever you want to call it), Janet Jackson's boob was the most searched event [ananova.com] in internet history, beating out Sept. 11th.

  • Google's logo back to default (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Azureflare ( 645778 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:49PM (#8186386)
    That google has recently changed their logo to their default logo. Hmm, maybe news of this reached them? That's pretty good response time.

    IMO Google should institute a policy for links such as these; they should link to their own google cached versions, perhaps caching any other content such as images as well, instead of linking to the "featured" site.

    The least they should do is warn the site of potential megatraffic. Anything less could be seen as slightly irresponsible on the part of google. However, it could also be they don't really realize how much power they really wield. Are there any google employees who read slashdot that can comment?

  • My site was "Cthuugled", too (Score:5, Interesting)

    by paulproteus ( 112149 ) <slashdot@ashee[ ]org ['sh.' in gap]> on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:51PM (#8186402) Homepage

    At 8:00 a.m. EST, my Mom IM'd me at school to tell me that the Internet as slow at home. At 9:00, my friend who uses my wiki told me that he had been letting it load for about an hour and it wasn't loading. The Xbox-Linux project's wiki [unmodded.mine.nu] also is hosted on my server, and it was inaccessible.

    All these web sites are hosted on my little Linux box in my basement, on my parents' cable-modem with 40 KB/s up to the Internet. What happened to me was that the Google logo, linking to the image search for "julia fractals", had my friend Jonathan's site as the top hit. (The exact hit was this page [mathjmendl.org].)

    The page was all-but inaccessible, as was my server. I eventually SSH'd in, copied the files to my JHU web hosting space, and set up an Apache redirect to serve the files from there [jhu.edu]. JHU (my university) has a pretty big pipe, I've learned over the years I've been here. :-).

    I mentioned this in a blog entry [jhu.edu] I made on the topic. It seems that now the search finds some other first hit, the .edu.au site mentioned in the story. Perhaps that's because my server was "Cthuugled" (eaten alive by Google, that is), and no one could reach the first link for so many hours.

  • Linkage (Score:4, Funny)

    by TitusC3v5 ( 608284 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @09:53PM (#8186412) Homepage
    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...

  • A matter of perspective (Score:4, Insightful)

    by corian ( 34925 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @10:00PM (#8186458)
    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.

  • Deathmatch (Score:5, Funny)

    by vikstar ( 615372 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @10:00PM (#8186461) Journal
    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.

  • patent (Score:3, Funny)

    by darkain ( 749283 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @10:08PM (#8186515) Homepage
    why not sue google for infringing on slashdots patent for taking down web servers?

  • who needs the slashdot effect? (Score:3, Funny)

    by BlueWire ( 9674 ) <drew.card@gmail.cCOBOLom minus language> on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @10:23PM (#8186597) Homepage
    ...we have a new definition of google-wack

  • Gurgle (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jamesjw ( 213986 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @10:27PM (#8186615) Homepage

    Looks like Google sent a server Gaga and it went down the Gurgler..

    Now if they were TRUELY smart, they'd have used those hits, IP addresses and timestamps as random seed for some internet fractal art! Oops, shouldnt have suggested that - somebody will probably get rich off it.. *shrug*

    -- Jim (If it sounds crazy, it probably is!)

  • Google stresses our server weekly (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Control-Z ( 321144 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @10:43PM (#8186691)
    We have a bit of diliema with Google. On one hand, we get high Google rankings for search terms relevant to products we carry. On the other hand, Google does a complete index of our 4,000+ page site every week, and it takes several days.

    We're on a wireless Internet connection due to severe lack of affordable Internet out here in the country, and they want to limit us to 30GB per month. I hate to complain to Google because we do get a lot of new customers from Google searches.

  • So instead of Google... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pinqkandi ( 189618 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @10:46PM (#8186710) Journal
    ...we'll just Slashdot it instead.

  • High Traffic-banner ads? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JumperCable ( 673155 ) on Thursday February 05, 2004 @03:24AM (#8186990)
    It is times like these I wish I didn't hate pay-for-click banner ads and had a few myself.

    I found the above statement from his web site interesting.

    Here is an idea. How about developing some code that only kicks in banner ads when hits go above a certain rate. This could help mitigate the costs of above average traffic, while keeping your site banner free for normal situations.

  • All customized Google logos... (Score:5, Informative)

    by shadowmatter ( 734276 ) on Thursday February 05, 2004 @04:06AM (#8187243)
    ... can be found here [google.com].

    I especially like the logo for Einstein's birthday (see March 14, 2003).

    - shadowmatter

  • suggestion to google (Score:4, Insightful)

    by real_smiff ( 611054 ) on Thursday February 05, 2004 @04:24AM (#8187332)
    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.

  • Mega Proxies (Score:3, Interesting)

    by j1v ( 534132 ) on Thursday February 05, 2004 @05:22AM (#8187618)
    So it's time all the big ISP's to start using transparent squids [squid-cache.org] or whatever, like the small ones do! They should slowdown (or even prevent) the /. - google effect.
    Is your ISP forcing you to use a cache????

  • So what is this called? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Snaller ( 147050 ) on Thursday February 05, 2004 @05:51AM (#8187750) Journal
    Googledotting?

  • i know the feeling... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rixdaffy ( 138224 ) * on Thursday February 05, 2004 @06:00AM (#8187791) Homepage
    I'm hositing a website for a Janet Jackon fanclub... I had to take it down for a few days after sunday since every person on this world started to query search engines to find "janet jackson superbowl".
    Suddenly it's not that great anymore if you have a high ranking on google and other search engines...
    ohwell... since sunday we've probably become a "adult oriented" site anyway (the way americans see it). I'm even starting to get personal mails from people offering me free adult hosting :)

    Ricardo.

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