A very unpleasant surprise awaited users of the popular Google Talk messenger on the afternoon of July 26, 2012 - the service simply did not function for 5 hours. By the evening, the work improved, but official explanations about the reason for such a serious failure from the management of Google have not been received. So users still have to put forward their own versions.
Chronology of events
At first, in their accounts on Google Talk, users noticed a terrible confusion - someone received messages clearly addressed to other people, someone from the interlocutors suddenly returned their own messages. At first, many "sinned" on viruses, communication problems and the inadequacy of their correspondents. However, it soon became clear that it was GTalk that was in trouble.
Users all over the world could still log into their own accounts and even see which of their friends were online, but it was no longer possible to send and receive messages. Soon, statuses from Google began to appear, which confirmed the existence of problems and promised a quick solution. However, time passed, and the situation did not change for the better. People have expressed their dissatisfaction on other sites. Soon, Google Talk was included in the ranking of global Twitter trends. It is worth noting that after a while the microblogging service itself "fell". The operability of both popular resources fully recovered only in the evening.
Supposed Reasons for Google Talk Failure
Versions about the reasons for the failure began to be put forward as soon as problems emerged. The first version was the "Olympic" version. It is reasonable to assume that a lot of people around the world decided to discuss the upcoming opening of the London Games and the 2012 Olympics in general. As a result, the service simply could not stand the overload.
Version number two is "hacker". According to information from the network, it was allegedly at this time that a certain conference of hackers was taking place. The failure that occurred could be caused by an attempt by the latter to draw the attention of GTalk owners to the existing "holes" in the service. Or perhaps the hacker attack was commissioned by Google's competitors.
The third version is “paranoid”. Some users recalled that a similar messaging mess occurred in Skype. And soon after that, messages began to be published on the network that this popular VoIP telephony service allegedly began to spy on its users, and the failures were caused by the modifications necessary for the "espionage activity" in the mechanism of the service. There were also calls to change the messenger - to switch to ISQ, Jabber and other lesser-known analogs in order to avoid spying from GoogleTalk as well.
If the representatives of Twitter after the resumption of work not only apologized, but also published a detailed and very self-critical report on the cause of the system malfunctions, then Google did not receive any "debriefing". In their final status, the company representatives only apologized for the inconvenience, said that the work was fine, and advised users, if they still have any problems, to contact the support service directly. The official Google Twitter account also did not publish any explanations about the reasons for the problems with GTalk.
However, many users of the messenger have already forgotten about these unpleasant five hours on July 26, 2012.
