At times, with the level of reverence doted on Apple and Google, we can forget that behind these tremendous brands, we have real people and technology that, at times, can fail. Maybe Google and Apple fail less often than others, but when they do, it makes news. Today, multiple reports cited Google Analytics, a free Web site traffic tracking service, had stopped tabulating data, while the company's Google Finance sites also were down.Last fall, I had installed Google Analytics code on the Web site at work, as well as for my blog. Sure enough, our Google Analytics accounts had stalled, showing no visits. Google didn't come forward right away to confront the outage, and in the blogosphere, the company's delayed response was deafening.
Eventually, Google came forward and cited "system maintenance." Really? Maintenance? In the middle of the business day? I doubt it. Something must have gone down.
GigaOM and TechCrunch have more on the outages.