# What happened to Google last night?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-google-last-night/275473>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 18, 2004, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-google-last-night/275473 "2004-11-18T15:33:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![SiouxChief](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@SiouxChief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SiouxChief)\
**Post date:** [November 18, 2004, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-google-last-night/275473/1 "2004-11-18T15:33:15Z")

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What happened to Google last night? Between 7:40pm and 8:05pm, I couldn’t access it, but I could get to other web sites just fine.

A random sampling of my friends found that some could access it, but others couldn’t. I heard rumors of a “denial of service” attack or possibly a cable being cut (which is what took down [fark.com](http://fark.com) last night at the same time), but wouldn’t those things bring down google for everyone?

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**Author:** ![milquetoast](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/258eb7/32.png) [@milquetoast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/milquetoast)\
**Post date:** [November 18, 2004, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-google-last-night/275473/2 "2004-11-18T16:01:31Z")

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I hadn’t heard anything about this. Have you tried googling it? 😃

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**Author:** ![ratatoskK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ratatoskk/32/2987_2.png) [@ratatoskK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ratatoskK)\
**Post date:** [November 18, 2004, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-google-last-night/275473/3 "2004-11-18T16:29:16Z")

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Maybe they were installing the Scholar beta.  
[http://scholar.google.com/](http://scholar.google.com/)

Here’s an article about it:

> **[Google Plans New Service for Scientists and Scholars (Published 2004)](https://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/18/technology/google-plans-new-service-for-scientists-and-scholars.html)**
>
> Google Inc plans to announce it is adding new search service aimed at scientists and academic researchers; Google Scholar is result of company's collaboration with number of scientific and academic publishers and is intended as first stop for...

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![SiouxChief](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@SiouxChief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SiouxChief)\
**Post date:** [November 18, 2004, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-google-last-night/275473/4 "2004-11-18T17:08:50Z")

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> [@milquetoast](#):
>
> I hadn’t heard anything about this. Have you tried googling it? 😃

Actually, yes! I even tried one of those other search engines I used to use long ago…zahoo, I think it was called…and I couldn’t find a mention of the outtage.

ratatoskK, perhaps you’re right about the scholar beta…