Tell HN: Google search partial outage while rolling out new search?
Currently performing searches. Sometimes doesn't work at all. Searches now seem to display cards when it works properly instead of urls with text.
169 comments
I searched for a specific string I copied out of a log file.
Google returned only one result and under it where it usually says what parts of your query it ignored to allow this result through it just had my entire query in full.
So basically I said "find me this" and Google went "I can't find that, here's something completely random from the internet that has nothing to do with anything"
Google returned only one result and under it where it usually says what parts of your query it ignored to allow this result through it just had my entire query in full.
So basically I said "find me this" and Google went "I can't find that, here's something completely random from the internet that has nothing to do with anything"
But that's what Google does when it's "working."
Yup. For the last 12 or so years :-/
I naively like to think they chucked a bunch of tests cases at some level when they introduced Google+ (when they threw out the old plus operator to reuse + for Google+ searches) and never recovered after that.
I naively like to think they chucked a bunch of tests cases at some level when they introduced Google+ (when they threw out the old plus operator to reuse + for Google+ searches) and never recovered after that.
No, if it’s working it’s more like “I can't find that, here's some completely random Advertisement from the internet that has nothing to do with anything"
It has everything to do with finding more opportunities to spam you with ads.
Normally I would agree, but this result was to a .gov site run by the state of Nevada.
I'm not in Nevada.
I'm not in Nevada.
I was literally in the process of searching for comparisons about MSFT vs Google search dominance as it relates to GPT when this happened. I thought I was using specific queries that were giving me intentionally worse results. Wow! I have never seen a Google outage prior to this. It better be one hell of an update or the writing on the wall is becoming clear.
You are very clearly the reason Google went down. BAD DEVELOPER! NO BEER PONG!
(This is a joke offered in the spirit of humor and is in no way a criticism.)
(This is a joke offered in the spirit of humor and is in no way a criticism.)
> This is a joke offered in the spirit of humor
Hacker News moment lol
Hacker News moment lol
You can’t be too sure around here
It's working for me, but there are no web site results (just images, videos and nonsensical Bard responses) so I think it's working as designed. I think the problem is you're expecting Google to return useful results, which is clearly not Alphabet's objective.
[One example of the content on Google search... I searched for "dingo" and one of the responses was "When did dingoes go extinct?" with a paragraph about how dingoes went extinct in Australia 2000 years ago. What color is the sky in your world, Bard?]
[One example of the content on Google search... I searched for "dingo" and one of the responses was "When did dingoes go extinct?" with a paragraph about how dingoes went extinct in Australia 2000 years ago. What color is the sky in your world, Bard?]
Just searched for Docker Swarm, and got [0] one "People also ask" card, one section for images, some related searched, and a button that says "More Results" that doesn't work. Moreover, the formatting of the CSS in the footer also looks weird. Seems like there's definitely been some issue with the deployment.
Edit: using brave and chrome on an Intel Mac, same results for both.
[0] https://imgur.com/a/CA5IB77
Edit: using brave and chrome on an Intel Mac, same results for both.
[0] https://imgur.com/a/CA5IB77
I find it hilarious that if you ask google if google is down, it simply states “No”, despite showing no results.
https://imgur.com/a/AUgMwe2
https://imgur.com/a/AUgMwe2
Well I mean it's not down, it's just... broken.
Kind of like when your're nodding off and someone asks if you're asleep. "No," you say, and have no memory of it the next day.
Kind of like when your're nodding off and someone asks if you're asleep. "No," you say, and have no memory of it the next day.
Broken as designed?
A/B test: "but what happens if we show _only_ ads and products"? /s
When I saw the broken results, I legitimately had to stop and consider if this was what they were trying to do.
Well... I've already switched to DDG and Bing, so it probably doesn't affect me at all.
Yesterday I tried "I'm feeling lucky" and each time the server returned /doodles, the Doodles page listing all the Google Doodles. I no longer felt lucky.
Is it far fetched to say that OpenAI is behind this panic at Google?
Well Google has been really good for better part of its time but they have been slacking for few years. I think it's good that OpenAI rocked their boat.
Well Google has been really good for better part of its time but they have been slacking for few years. I think it's good that OpenAI rocked their boat.
Funny how flimsy dominance is. In a few years, search quality has gone from top to average, then all of a sudden, it’s going into the “irrelevant” field.
Funny how good Microsoft is. Bitbucket is shit, GitLab is barely acceptable, we’ll subscribe to GitHub because it is the best in class. Google’s support is so bad that we’ll subscribe to O365. Now Bing and OpenAI.
Suddenly Microsoft is the main actor on the internet again.
Funny how good Microsoft is. Bitbucket is shit, GitLab is barely acceptable, we’ll subscribe to GitHub because it is the best in class. Google’s support is so bad that we’ll subscribe to O365. Now Bing and OpenAI.
Suddenly Microsoft is the main actor on the internet again.
Can anecdotally attest to this, working at Microsoft is slowly becoming more sought after than Google amongst me and my peers (a few of which work at Google with me).
Once they get an actual MSFT offer with comparably peanuts in $$$ they'll no longer think the same :)
Not to mention imagining having to write design docs in web based Microsoft Word.
Not to mention imagining having to write design docs in web based Microsoft Word.
I personally think the entire dev industry earns strangely well. I’d expect wages to be like the rest of humanity: 2x to 4x minimum wage, up to 5x or 6x when you manage a department of hundreds of people after a career on coffee and antidepressants, chaining all-nighters at work and risking a stroke by 45.
Maybe Microsoft is the un-inflated wage expectancy.
Maybe Microsoft is the un-inflated wage expectancy.
We are paid so well because our work can scale to millions of people, that's all there is to it.
I've progressively through my career felt more ashamed of earning so much money for the comparable little societal benefit I generate. Surely, I work on products that hundreds of millions of people use daily, they even enjoy it, but I don't think the beneficial impact of my work to society is anywhere close to what teachers, nurses, doctors, and so on provide. At some points the impact of my work on society was probably a net negative, I just generated cash for the company in detriment of society's needs.
I just can create millions and millions of US$ for a company through my labour. And for that we are well paid. I know, I've just described capitalism but some folks probably need to be more aware of it.
I've progressively through my career felt more ashamed of earning so much money for the comparable little societal benefit I generate. Surely, I work on products that hundreds of millions of people use daily, they even enjoy it, but I don't think the beneficial impact of my work to society is anywhere close to what teachers, nurses, doctors, and so on provide. At some points the impact of my work on society was probably a net negative, I just generated cash for the company in detriment of society's needs.
I just can create millions and millions of US$ for a company through my labour. And for that we are well paid. I know, I've just described capitalism but some folks probably need to be more aware of it.
This is a perplexing attitude that’s common in our field. Somehow the field at large is creating the best teacher, doctor, entertainer, communication tools, and makes it available to everyone for low cost and some think they are less important than the inferior things they replace en masse. In contrast, doctors, for instance, create artificial monopolies and ensure supply is limited and consistently pat themselves on their back.
Perhaps it is because the value created is done by large teams of specialized people who cannot individually attribute the revolution to their work directly. Perhaps it is that the value created is power law distributed and only certain individuals in our field produce the majority of value created thus the rest legitimately believe what you described.
Perhaps it is because the value created is done by large teams of specialized people who cannot individually attribute the revolution to their work directly. Perhaps it is that the value created is power law distributed and only certain individuals in our field produce the majority of value created thus the rest legitimately believe what you described.
Perhaps the "value added" is DRM and advertisements in your personal computer's interface, and the "net negative" is honest and true.
No defending of DRM but to claim advertisement is net negative for a society is quite a stretch. Ask a small business who gets economic opportunity.
> We are paid so well because our work can scale to millions of people, that's all there is to it.
That is the case with chip designers and mechanical engineers as well but software engineers are paid significantly more than those other professions.
That is the case with chip designers and mechanical engineers as well but software engineers are paid significantly more than those other professions.
This. I don't understand how Microsoft is able to get away with paying so much less than faang and co.
MSFT values business deals, security with finance attached, market branding with finance attached; institutional contracts and Defense spending; basically all the business parts with coders doing the work. For people who train to work skillfully, it is a rude awakening to interact with people who train to take control of business and get the programming done like any other commodity -- extracting the profit and control of future profit immediately with security, contracts and worker surveillance.
Perception of stability.
Which until recently, was relatively unshaken.
As an employer, MS also has tended to be much more understanding of personal circumstances and the likes - I know people there who took long career breaks, or had mental issues/breakdowns (sometimes quite public) that would elsewhere have been a resume generating event.
Locally Apple are also regarded as an extremely stable employer, especially at the lower levels (support, etc).
I've friends working fucking customer support jobs at apple because its stable and comfortable, when they could be making twice as much elsewhere given their skills.
I considered taking such a job a couple of years ago, after becoming thoroughly burned out of consulting/contracting and wanting some stability.
Funny thing about Apple though is the IP clauses in their contracts.
Even the guys working phone support for customers have to go through a whole paperwork process if they want to publish code they wrote in their own time online, just to ensure there's no Apple IP in it.
Which until recently, was relatively unshaken.
As an employer, MS also has tended to be much more understanding of personal circumstances and the likes - I know people there who took long career breaks, or had mental issues/breakdowns (sometimes quite public) that would elsewhere have been a resume generating event.
Locally Apple are also regarded as an extremely stable employer, especially at the lower levels (support, etc).
I've friends working fucking customer support jobs at apple because its stable and comfortable, when they could be making twice as much elsewhere given their skills.
I considered taking such a job a couple of years ago, after becoming thoroughly burned out of consulting/contracting and wanting some stability.
Funny thing about Apple though is the IP clauses in their contracts.
Even the guys working phone support for customers have to go through a whole paperwork process if they want to publish code they wrote in their own time online, just to ensure there's no Apple IP in it.
It's not the worst of the web based doc editing tools at least.
And good things are sure to follow when it becomes the hottest new status symbol/ego magnet...
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But isn't the point of "I'm feeling lucky" to take you to the first search result instead of the list? Not just take you somewhere random.
It seems that retirning the /doodles page is the intended function of the "I'm feeling lucky button" when the search string is empty.^1
Thank you for the correction. I learned something about that button I never knew.
What did the button do in the years before /doodles existed. The button has existed since the early days, but not /doodles.
1.
https://fossbytes.com/what-does-the-im-feeling-lucky-button-...
https://www.pcworld.com/article/460864/google_changes_im_fee...
Thank you for the correction. I learned something about that button I never knew.
What did the button do in the years before /doodles existed. The button has existed since the early days, but not /doodles.
1.
https://fossbytes.com/what-does-the-im-feeling-lucky-button-...
https://www.pcworld.com/article/460864/google_changes_im_fee...
Down for me. Googling "is google down?" hilariously just returns "No."
Screenshot for posterity
https://imgur.com/a/AUgMwe2
Those LLMs are such jokers…
I was just about to ask the same question. I'm in the Northeastern United States. No web pages are returned when I search. Videos, Images, and news kind of work, but nothing else.
This is the first time in recent memory I can remember Google being broken like this.
This is the first time in recent memory I can remember Google being broken like this.
First time in my life I recall Google being down tbh
Mid USA here. Wonder if EMEA people can chime in.
Even YouTube had a problem for me.
No issues here in India
Logging out makes it work normally for me.
Logging back in breaks it.
There seem to be different kinds of breakage depending on the search. For example if I search for "square roots" it give the top section that suggests other searches, and then a more results thingy at the bottom of the page, which doesn't actually load more results. The count at the top of results appears to be correct though telling me there are 446 million results for my search.
If I search for "battery packs" it looks like all I get are the kind of things that normally go in that strip near the top where it gives shopping suggestions. Instead of just being one row like normal it is row after row of them.
Logging back in breaks it.
There seem to be different kinds of breakage depending on the search. For example if I search for "square roots" it give the top section that suggests other searches, and then a more results thingy at the bottom of the page, which doesn't actually load more results. The count at the top of results appears to be correct though telling me there are 446 million results for my search.
If I search for "battery packs" it looks like all I get are the kind of things that normally go in that strip near the top where it gives shopping suggestions. Instead of just being one row like normal it is row after row of them.
Down for me too in France.
Kinda remarkable that this is the first time I see a Google Search outage in an entire lifetime of using it.
Kinda remarkable that this is the first time I see a Google Search outage in an entire lifetime of using it.
very weird getting some kind of message from BARD https://i.jollo.org/yq1I6bRc.png
Oh no, it's clearly sentient! Ahhh!
Parallel thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35622873
Intriguingly, while google.com isn't working for me, google.ca is.
Intriguingly, while google.com isn't working for me, google.ca is.
Very likely to be because if you change TLDs, you're not logged in any more. I am logged in at google.com but not google.mx etc.
Whoops. That looks like a SEV1. All on-call prod web SREs to their battle stations.
Imagine what if company gives every oncall a Pager and someday it shows a rolling SEV1!!!!
Interestingly it works in a private browser window, but when I'm in a tab with a logged-in session it doesn't.
Makes it sound like the mixer which personalizes the (actual) results is having trouble at least across the US which would explain why incognito and various cards and videos from other corpora are working okay.
Weird--can confirm this for both Firefox and Chrome (on Ubuntu Linux 20.04). Google works just fine in a private window, but not in a regular window.
Up again now. Was working in private only. Was just about to try logging in an seeing but it came back up before I could. Nothing reported in the search status dashboard https://status.search.google.com/ when I checked
It also worked through Google search "proxies" like Startpage.
Yeah you are right. I'm also able to search in private window.
Same... never seen that happen before lol. That's a pretty big issue.
Yes, for me too it isnt showing result and just suggesting similar searches and link to relvant images. https://imgur.com/a/CJvMTxu
I get a more results section at the bottom which suggests the existence of main content, but if there is anything under it, its covered by a map with location-based search information.
Same for me. Looks like SEV1.
You're assuming that Alphabet management categorizes broken search as "disruption of critical customer facing service."
They seem to like to cancel services people like, maybe Google decided to EoL search? It's not like it's been useful over the last couple of years.
Probably time to email all my Gmail account contacts and give them my post-gmail address.
They seem to like to cancel services people like, maybe Google decided to EoL search? It's not like it's been useful over the last couple of years.
Probably time to email all my Gmail account contacts and give them my post-gmail address.
It's working for me, but there are no web site results (just images, videos and nonsensical Bard responses) so I think it's working as designed. I think the problem is you're expecting Google to return useful results, which is clearly not Alphabet's objective.
[One example of the content on Google search... I searched for "dingo" and one of the responses was "When did dingoes go extinct?" with a paragraph about how dingoes went extinct in Australia 2000 years ago. What color is the sky in your world, Bard?]
[One example of the content on Google search... I searched for "dingo" and one of the responses was "When did dingoes go extinct?" with a paragraph about how dingoes went extinct in Australia 2000 years ago. What color is the sky in your world, Bard?]
It's broken for me but not in incognito. This is pretty bad.
Search results have been mostly empty for me for last 30 minutes.
https://imgur.com/a/AKIkO7p
https://imgur.com/a/AKIkO7p
The results displayed (when it works) seem to be cards which contain results subsets of similar searches. Which is kind of bizarre. Not displaying websites that match the actual search terms is a radical change in functionality. I assume this is the result of some misguided attempt to integrate LLMs into search. Guess we'll see.
Interestingly, while google.com isn't working for me, google.ca did return results. I wonder what's up!
I am doing research on a product I want to buy, and it's just showing buy-now ads. It used to do that right before the regular searches, but now it's buy-now ads, all the way down.
Yeah, I've noticed the same. It seems like just the search results don't show up - I see video recommendations, additional search recommendations, search results, etc.
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This is so strange. I had to use bing a few minutes ago.
Yeah, no link results, only images and videos, US East Coast. I imagine they deployed a change to their search that went wrong. Eesh.
"Is Google down"
"No"
https://imgur.com/a/JnXHVz9
"No"
https://imgur.com/a/JnXHVz9
I don't know why they don't just put all this LLM feature as beta or "AI".
They should keep google as organic search engine.
They should keep google as organic search engine.
Only the main search is down, and sporadically for me.
Dare I say it, but could this be related to Bard integration?
Dare I say it, but could this be related to Bard integration?
It’s become self-aware, strap in!
All I get is the "people also ask" box and some videos, depending on the search.
When this settles down, I'm pretty sure search is going to show worst results when it comes to specific questions, and will instead show more generalized results. That's going to be hell for anyone still writing a blog.
Layoffs go BRRRRR
Fine from South America (Colombia), but when I VPN through the US, no results.
Same here. When I'm logged into my account, the results are empty, but in incognito mode everything is fine. First, I thought it was one of my extensions, but now I see other people have this too.
I was getting blank search result pages on Google.com in chrome so I switched to Firefox and it was fine over there for a while but then those searches started coming back blank too.
What a jumbled mess!
It's just throwing whatever media it has on any topic you input so it splatters the SERPs with normal results (links), images, video, news, "cards", etc... It hurts!
It's just throwing whatever media it has on any topic you input so it splatters the SERPs with normal results (links), images, video, news, "cards", etc... It hurts!
Same... very intermittent
Good luck Googlers, get back down from the roof and get to work.
It was down: https://downdetector.com/status/google/
Yup. I thought it was a userscript bug until I saw this thread.
I saw it - incredible to see cracks begin to emerge in the former titans of the industry. FAANG will go the way of Cisco, Motorola, et al.
Google had some problems already 10 hours ago. When I tried to log in to our Google hosted work email I got an error page with a link to a ststus page. First time for the 5+ years we have been using it. I expected to see all green on that status page as it often is on such pages especially for AWS. To my surprise there was an amber. Don't recall what service it was, it sounded unrelated to office suite or whatever product we use. 2 minutes later I was able to log in.
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Down for me as well. I think it might be the first time I'm seeing this, since Google first came online.
Not down for me over here in Australia.
Only showing shopping results here.
the AI robot takeover has begun :)
I decided to do some queries with DDG while it's down, so I googled "duckduckgo".
SMDH.
SMDH.
Worst of alll, DDG's "!sp" service isn't working now! :-O
Yup. I had it happen on Safari but not Chrome. But it's back to normal now.
Indonesia and Australia is up.
Its up for me, but slow, not returning main results, and with an odd design.
[deleted]
Verizon network outages all over the country this afternoon - maybe that?
Same here... it's returning video results, but nothing else.
Same, all hail Google's new AI god (plz don't kill me)
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Yeah, if I'm logged in I get no results. Incognito works.
Google.com renders for me but 0 results for all searches :-O.
works for me at the time of writing
edit: not logged in (usually am not)
edit: not logged in (usually am not)
I have been having hell with sheets and drive all day.
yes, google is only showing similar searches right now - also chrome canary is crashing repeatedly for me now too - although probably unrelated
You never know. Maybe they have a test that checks if Chrome can load results on google.com and they disabled the test because Chrome was crashing. And that caused them to fail to detect the search result bug.
Yes. getting no search results only periphery data
Bard integration.
Fixed for me, as of 9:29pm northeast us.
Nope, working fine for me - Los Angeles
i had that experience last night too. I figured it was just me. Apparently it was very widespread?
Working just fine in Northern Europe
Up in Central Florida on T-Mobile.
Just here saying hi for posterity
Yep. Thought it was just for me.
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I’m seeing this on mobile only
Down in us east, 9:17 pm local
Yes, I noticed this just now.
Definitely down. Holy smokes!
same, searches are empty and only showing the "Related searches".
.
Working fine in New Zealand
Works
It works for me in Canada
for me it works when signed into one google account but not another
I really hope they dont bard-ify the basic search page too much. I like simple, fast tech.
Yes - São Paulo, Brazil
Fine here in Australia.
kinda cool, since it just seems broken, not just unavailable.
Down for me in the US.
Yep, down for me too
Works fine in Asia.
What a glorious downfall of arrogance and smug outdated systems
Yep I see nothing
It returns to me
Maybe those layoffs are having an effective.
working for me in incognito mode
Not working
no results, USA....wild stuff
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its also awful looking
seems to be back
yes
same
Google engineers scrambling to find out how to use their knowledge of if a string is a concatenation of two dictionary words, or other useless LeetCode puzzles, to mitigate their services going down.
Reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35545817
Reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35545817
While snarky, and slightly off beat for HN, I think your comment does carry a good point: Google does hire the best of the best, but by a metric that seems to cause all their products to get worse.