Google just went down for about 5 minutes.
The outage, observed by the VentureBeat staff and confirmed by multiple Twitter reports, lasted from approximately 3:50 p.m. to approximately 3:55 p.m. Pacific time.
It appears to have affected all of Google’s services, including the Google.com homepage, YouTube, Google Drive, and Gmail.
As search engine expert Danny Sullivan observed, that’s a very rare occurrence. In April, Gmail and Google Drive both experienced widespread outages, but the Google.com homepage hasn’t gone offline in recent memory.
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Given Google’s Q2 2013 revenues of $14.1 billion, that means the company makes about $108,000 every single minute that it’s online.
In other words, the outage just cost the company about $545,000 — enough to have put a couple of Lamborghinis in the Google parking lot.
It’s also equivalent about about five of chief executive Larry Page’s Tesla electric car.
Or about 363 Google Glass units.
That’s gotta hurt.
Fortunately, everything seems to be back online now. Google users: You can breathe again.
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