back to article What's not up, Docs? Google Docs goes titsup in time for Friday beers

It's not you – it's Google. The web giant's Docs cloud has fallen off the internet, leaving US office workers eyeing up the boozer early. The in-browser word processor is offline around the world, and returns a 502 error when accessing it. Google Drive is also struggling to stay up, it seems. The alleged productivity suite …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Good excuses

    The Cloud ate my homework!

    1. Lee D Silver badge

      Re: Good excuses

      I work in schools.

      You'd be amazed how often that's the excuse.

      "Oh, I'm sure I pressed Save", etc.

      Not to mention the "I forgot my password" reset delay to get out of a lesson...

      1. chivo243 Silver badge

        Re: Good excuses

        Couldn't you just give them the back-up version? I get that one quite a bit. Little Joey's teacher is mad because he doesn't anything anymore.

      2. GrumpenKraut

        Re: Good excuses

        Counter measure, as a rule: No computer problem of any kind will be accepted as an excuse.

        This works. There are (rare!) situations where slack can (and should) be given.

        1. 404

          Re: Good excuses

          Ya'll might be wrong too - much to my dismay, I recently found that my local school district does *everything* on Google Classrooms. Now we're supposed to be given express notification and are to give permission to use that Google service yet have never seen it ever mentioned. Only reason I know anything about it, is that we've recently had to pull our daughter out of middle school and are now homeschooling her. The girl is thriving again.

          I haven't seen a textbook from public school in years.

          1. Lee D Silver badge

            Re: Good excuses

            You'll find - if that school is anything like the ones I've worked for - that your parent/school agreement actually already covers giving details to third parties for school use. Otherwise everything, from the canteen, to the trip organisation, to medical notes, to god-knows-what has to be authorised time and time again throughout the year.

            As such, there may be a "notification" clause but it's probably not compulsory (do you need to know that they've changed catering provider, for instance? And, yes, your catering provider will have access to personal information in the form of allergen lists and maybe even cash-less catering systems).

            I know that many private schools - where I have worked for the last 7 years or so - have a basic contract that even covers use of photos etc. In state schools they give opt-outs, in private schools they tend not to. If you want to attend the school, they get permission to use your child's image in certain ways in order to promote the school (e.g. not identified [child protection], but stuck in a brochure, or leaflet or even parent newsletter).

            Asking for permission for EVERY LITTLE THING is a really huge administrative burden. That's not to excuse such things as being "natural" in the course of running a school - they should at least tell you at some point - but Google etc. are the least of your worries there.

            And, yes, I have spent many hours in state schools photoshopping out certain children from crowds. It's tedious and a waste of time, even if you understand the parental concern (which I don't if identifying information does not accompany such images).

            1. 404

              Re: Good excuses

              Google Classroom T&C's expressly require parental permission for each student - this is a public school and yes, there are more issues with this particular district.

              https://redd.it/3iwu5c

              1. Lee D Silver badge

                Re: Good excuses

                "Customer acknowledges and agrees that it is solely responsible for compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, including, but not limited to, obtaining parental consent concerning collection of students' personal information used in connection with the provisioning and use of the Services by the Customer and End Users."

                Nowhere does it state that parental consent cannot come from a pre-written contract that they sign that says that certain third-parties will be used for data processing etc. In fact, that's the only mention of any word with "parent" in it in the whole agreement.

                All it says is that the school has to have consent. That could be prior, during, it could be explicit or implicit, it may not even mention Google by name at all. Hence why most schools have just a blanket agreement that - by agreeing to it - you are giving parental consent for the life of your child in that school to use such third parties for such purposes.

                Otherwise an awful lot of schools would be sending out an awful lot of letters all day long, every day for every minor service they touch. The average primary school probably gives child data out to something like 50-100 organisations a year - everything from government departments (which are still governed by the same rules), third-party suppliers, software, online services, activities clubs, independent staff (e.g. peripatetic music teachers, job agencies), etc. etc. etc.

                You can't give explicit, fine-grained permission because that quickly turns into a nightmare, so as a parent you're agreeing that "for school purposes" (normally) the school gets consent to share data with their selected third-parties. Otherwise, literally, there'd be a mountain of paperwork and nothing would ever get done.

  2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Why over-complicate things? Just download LibreOffice & get on with writing. The more things you depend on the greater the probability that one of them will stop the show.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Pirate

      But how do the corporations entrap you (and your $valuable private data) if you behave like that? Some things are more important than productivity and reliability.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        ah yes, there is a simplistic beauty in being owned by a megacorp

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Better get rogered than not get kicked in the face?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Gimp

          "Better get rogered than not get kicked in the face?"

          Exactly! There's the spirit.

          Come on, admit it. Nothing beats the feeling of coming 'round one morning and realising all your stuff's gone and you've spent the last few years drugged out of your senses and shackled naked to the wall some megapimps purpose built gallery for the amusement of every sleazy corporation and agency willing to splash a couple of ‰ of 1¢ at your owner.

          You feel so deliciously cheap and dirty and violated.

    2. arkhangelsk

      Google Docs

      >Why over-complicate things? Just download LibreOffice & get on with writing.

      To be fair, AFAIK Google Docs does have functionality that are very good for teachers - the best of which is constant revision control. No one can say they didn't save because as long as they are online every change is saved constantly.

      Further, all those versions can give the teacher an insight as to the student's thought processes using the "view previous revisions" feature. You can see, for example, at one point the student tried to put Paragraph 3 first before deciding it fits better at the bottom. You can see though it is crap he at least pretended to work on his homework for 5 hours rather than 30 minutes which might be worth effort points. In fact, with special software you can in theory you can get data of every keystroke, since it is at base a keystroke logger and when you open your file, Google Docs actually reconstructs your file by stepping through all your keystrokes.

  3. Vector

    Ah...the Silicon Valley Ivory Tower

    I still think all cloud developers should be dropped with their laptops into the middle of the Mojave desert on a yearly basis. They'd figgur out real quick how good an idea having everything in the cloud is.

    1. x 7

      Re: Ah...the Silicon Valley Ivory Tower

      My understanding is that theres not enough humidity for clouds to exist in the Mohave

      1. billse10

        Re: Ah...the Silicon Valley Ivory Tower

        makes for an interesting test, then

      2. a_yank_lurker

        Re: Ah...the Silicon Valley Ivory Tower

        I sort think that's the point

        1. ratfox
          Trollface

          Re: Ah...the Silicon Valley Ivory Tower

          Fine, but be sure to also drop a control group, fully equipped with their own servers in their backpacks. And check which ones get out of the desert fastest, or at all.

          1. The Vociferous Time Waster

            Re: Ah...the Silicon Valley Ivory Tower

            Well if they can print a map...

  4. nickpaton

    Never got this do-everything-on-line malarkey ;)

    +1 Libre office

  5. cd

    Everyone that lost something deserves it. Document Darwinism.

  6. Captain DaFt

    Best argument against cloud for your PHB:

    Boss: "We're moving everything to the cloud to enhance productivity and cut costs, immediately!"

    Workers: "YAY! Hours of getting paid for doing nothing every day the cloud goes down!"

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  7. Kev99 Silver badge

    OH YEAH! Let's put everything on the cloud. It's safe. It's secure. It's always available. Bull puppies!

    1. Dadmin
      FAIL

      HAHA! I am never without my important docs. I have a USB stick and a slack IT security department that still let's me plug in any stupid USB device. Probably even ones I could find in the streets. Good thing I'm still mostly sane.

      I'll tell you what does suck even more though; android ice cream sandwich on my Sammy Tab 2 no longer lets me fetch local files, only ones stored on the G:drive. Perhaps it's something with my config, but if Wonky's Choco Factory is forcing my important crap into the cloud, then I will have to get a different device next time 'round, won't I?

      1. The Vociferous Time Waster

        Re:

        USB sticks? How awful.

    2. Phil Kingston

      For most deployments it is more secure and reliable than hosting it onsite.

  8. Your alien overlord - fear me

    I don't do twitter but I do like the el Reg tweet.

  9. heyrick Silver badge

    ???

    Docs on a mobile device (iPad) lets you keep specified documents on the device so you can edit them in the absence of any connectivity. Doesn't the PC version do this?

  10. VinceH

    It's a shame about the timing - i.e. that it was after the close of business (for most) here in the UK.

    There are a couple of people I know who need to suffer an outage to help them wake up and smell the coffee, and hopefully wean them off the Kool-aid.

    1. Phil Kingston

      Their uptime is pretty respectable. Certainly higher than most SMBs could manage with on-premise.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The Cloud

    Other peoples computers you have no control over.

  12. The Vociferous Time Waster

    Cloud service

    I have my own private cloud - I ssh in to a box I own and use vi.

  13. Doctor_Wibble
    Black Helicopters

    Did everyone sync at the same time?

    Pun unintended, sorry.

    What is the capacity of the interwebs between clients and google's various storages, and could it be that (and it pains me to say this) google might not be to blame? Friday lunchtime/afternoon (US) and early evening (UK) do seem to be prime panic-time for end-of day deadlines and end-of-week syncs and (badly timed or manual) backups, so was there something else in the middle that broke? Is someone's storage always at the nearest location?

    Of course the safe-harbour thing might have meant the NSA and GCHQ had to implement some changes and these are what slowed it all down.

    /randomtheorieswithadashoftinfoil

    1. stephajn

      Re: Did everyone sync at the same time?

      "Pun unintended, sorry."

      No no no.... You don't get to say that. You should be taking credit for an awesome pun!

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    I just experienced a titsup from our beloved Reg....

    1. Mr_Pitiful
  15. Mr_Pitiful
    Unhappy

    Other sites

    You Tube & Google Maps is also playing up

    1. Mr_Pitiful

      Re: Other sites

      Also I just had a text from my car that it can't sync data (error code 77)

      so now I know my car is connected to the web, but how exactly, I don't pay for it!

      1. Known Hero

        Re: Other sites

        Umm what !!

        Where do you live, what car do you have, are you sure its not linked up with your phone ???

        I am slightly concerned for myself.

  16. Bitbeisser

    There we go again...

    When people start to realize that the cloud isn't a solution for everything and everyone.

    It has it's uses,but to rely on it is just calling for problems...

    "When you have your head in the cloud, you don't see anymore what's going on"

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