December 12, 2012 at 10:20Google accidentally passes Chrome Army self-destruction code
- Transfer
Google Gmail did not work on Monday for 20 minutes. It was unpleasant, but the case is not unprecedented. This kind of outage happens all the time. The strange thing is that the failure in Gmail coincided with the general decline of Google Chrome browsers.
Late on Monday, Google engineer Tim Steele confirmed that the fault lies with the developers of the company. He said that the fall also affected those Chrome users who used another Google web service, Sync, and that Sync and other company services - Gmail presumably too - were turned off on Monday because Google misconfigured the load balancing server.
Sync is essentially Google’s response to Apple iCloud. This software service was created by Google in order to unbind web surfers from their desktops. It runs in the background, transferring information between the Chrome browser and Google’s servers, so people who log in to Google can get their bookmarks, extensions, and applications - regardless of which computer they are running on.
Steele wrote that on Monday, problems with the Google Sync servers caused such browser errors that he could not cope with and had to close with an error.
“This is due to the backend service, which is responsible for distributing the load on the server - in case of congestion, the server starts responding to the client that it does not process any data types,” Steele says. This message about the termination of work and caused crashes and crashes of browsers.
The problem did not last long, but spread widely. Dozens of crash reports have appeared on Hacker News. “My Chrome crashes every ten minutes for the last half hour,” one user wrote. ( From the author : The crash in Chrome really looked very strange and unpleasant. It simply crashed periodically with an error and it was generally unclear what caused it and what actually to do. )
This may be the first call. The crooked code on the page may cause a browser crash, but the Monday error looks very different: a large-scale crash was caused by a web service that ensures the browser works.
Think of it as the flip side of cloud technology. Google’s feature has always been that its services are easier to use and have fewer errors than in crooked desktop software. But the problem with Sync showed that when Google disconnects, it can not only cut you off from mail - but also cause more global problems with a desktop program, such as a browser.
Chrome prides itself on the sandbox principle, so problems with one page can cause failure in only one bookmark in the browser, and not cause the entire program to crash. But this is exactly what happened with the Monday bug. He crashed the entire browser.
“This is, of course, a big and unusual problem, because if the browser crashes, then this is the fall of the Chromium model itself,” says Kevin Quennesson, CTO of the Everpix online photo service.
“When you bring authentication, authentication, and the cloud to your desktop application, you may encounter very strange failures,” says David Ulevich, founder of OpenDNS, in turn.
This kind of problem will occur more often, as developers work to create browsers like Rockmelt that do more than just browse pages, says Michael Mahemoff, a former member of the Google Chrome team, founder of Player FM. “People are trying to integrate more identity and these kinds of synchronization services and social services.”
This is also a problem that cloud service providers such as Apple iCloud and Windows Live will have to worry more and more, as they are more and more intertwined with our phones and computers.
“Passing authentication and identity to one provider, if it is unstable, can have far-reaching consequences,” says Ulevich. “Imagine a scenario in which you simply cannot open your Android phone or make a call to Google Voice. This is not just your browser. ”
Late on Monday, Google engineer Tim Steele confirmed that the fault lies with the developers of the company. He said that the fall also affected those Chrome users who used another Google web service, Sync, and that Sync and other company services - Gmail presumably too - were turned off on Monday because Google misconfigured the load balancing server.
Sync is essentially Google’s response to Apple iCloud. This software service was created by Google in order to unbind web surfers from their desktops. It runs in the background, transferring information between the Chrome browser and Google’s servers, so people who log in to Google can get their bookmarks, extensions, and applications - regardless of which computer they are running on.
Steele wrote that on Monday, problems with the Google Sync servers caused such browser errors that he could not cope with and had to close with an error.
“This is due to the backend service, which is responsible for distributing the load on the server - in case of congestion, the server starts responding to the client that it does not process any data types,” Steele says. This message about the termination of work and caused crashes and crashes of browsers.
The problem did not last long, but spread widely. Dozens of crash reports have appeared on Hacker News. “My Chrome crashes every ten minutes for the last half hour,” one user wrote. ( From the author : The crash in Chrome really looked very strange and unpleasant. It simply crashed periodically with an error and it was generally unclear what caused it and what actually to do. )
This may be the first call. The crooked code on the page may cause a browser crash, but the Monday error looks very different: a large-scale crash was caused by a web service that ensures the browser works.
Think of it as the flip side of cloud technology. Google’s feature has always been that its services are easier to use and have fewer errors than in crooked desktop software. But the problem with Sync showed that when Google disconnects, it can not only cut you off from mail - but also cause more global problems with a desktop program, such as a browser.
Chrome prides itself on the sandbox principle, so problems with one page can cause failure in only one bookmark in the browser, and not cause the entire program to crash. But this is exactly what happened with the Monday bug. He crashed the entire browser.
“This is, of course, a big and unusual problem, because if the browser crashes, then this is the fall of the Chromium model itself,” says Kevin Quennesson, CTO of the Everpix online photo service.
“When you bring authentication, authentication, and the cloud to your desktop application, you may encounter very strange failures,” says David Ulevich, founder of OpenDNS, in turn.
This kind of problem will occur more often, as developers work to create browsers like Rockmelt that do more than just browse pages, says Michael Mahemoff, a former member of the Google Chrome team, founder of Player FM. “People are trying to integrate more identity and these kinds of synchronization services and social services.”
This is also a problem that cloud service providers such as Apple iCloud and Windows Live will have to worry more and more, as they are more and more intertwined with our phones and computers.
“Passing authentication and identity to one provider, if it is unstable, can have far-reaching consequences,” says Ulevich. “Imagine a scenario in which you simply cannot open your Android phone or make a call to Google Voice. This is not just your browser. ”