I’ve always wondered how much conflicts affect the speeds of search engines worldwide, not just in the affected countries. How much is due to heavier than usual trafffic and how much is deliberate meddling by hackers/goverment-sponsored hackers? Can Russian interference in its own citizens’ reception of Google sites affect internet receptions elsewhere? I’d be intersted in any studies on search engines experiencing pronounced slowdowns right now. ( VPN quality, browser quality or hardware connectivity issues are beside the point for this question )
The internet was originally a DARPA idea to have a reliable communication system in case of nuclear war. In case one bit was taken out communication traffic could be re-routed seamlessly and reach its destination.
Of course, there are limits to that but the point is the system is robust.
I cannot see how the current conflict in Ukraine would affect that short of Russian hackers making an intentional attack on the system. Even then I am not sure how much long term trouble they could cause. If they could it would be unprecedented.
Well Russia has been threatening to slow down Google for some time(based on my reading last year), if they aren’t already attempting it. I haven’t kept up with the latest on that score. Are saying that typically search engines are not slowed down by unusually high traffic? Has it ever occurred ?
I’d estimate that zero of it is due to heavier than usual traffic, while the remaining zero of it is due to deliberate meddling by hackers. Is there any reason to think otherwise? Any evidence, in other words, that search engines are slowing down at all, or that traffic is up at all, or that government hackers are making any attempt to attack search engines?
Why would search engine traffic go up? Have your Google searches actually increased because of the war? If so, I don’t think that is typical. I think the war may have changed what people are searching for, but I highly doubt it has affected the number of searches people do per day.