Jakob Nielsen used to say that the best test of whether you’d created a useful website was this: take it down. See how many people scream.
Google, if you’re listening, I AM SCREAMING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This morning I went to log into my Google Homepage, which over the last month I’ve honed to an information console that I’m now totally, completely, utterly dependent on, to find it gone.
Vanished my Google Analytics graph tracking my personal and work website traffic levels in a glance.
Gone my Tab of RSS feeds from my friends blogs which gave me a one glance sense of what was new.
Gone my ZeitGeist tab of what was hot on Technorati and Del.icio.us.
Gone my CALENDAR, with my day’s appointments pulled out for me to see. Gone my news feed of everything that interests me, including my Cephalapod News Search.
Gone my GMAIL feed, gone my quote of the day, gone my what’s new in the Pynchon Wiki, gone even that goofy top banner beach theme in which the sunrise and sunset were synchronized to my timezone.
Please, please, please, Google, or somebody, tell tell me there’s a way to get this back, and that I don’t have to spend another month rebuilding.
You’ve killed my morning more thoroughly than someone stealing into my house in the night and swiping every form of caffeine in the cupboard.
This is one of the dangers of moving our desktops out on the web: we’re reliant on the support and technical stewardship of a remote and inaccessible party, and when things like this go wrong, oh lordy, how wrong they go…
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My google page says I have been signed out and to sign in to see. When I go to settings everything is listed but when I hit save it doesn’t help? I’m not sure I ever signed in before. How can I get it back?
Yep. Gone is everything I ever owned from google too. Gone is my gmail, reader, picasa, google analytics. I still have the account, but NOTHING is attached to it anymore. All gone.
Wouldn’t it be nice if they would fix this!
I was wondering if you were affected when I read about this. The paid version of this service now comes with an SLA I believe. Not sure if you have to be a company to sign up for it though.
Thank heavens. It’s back. But you got a point there, Pepijn. If only it wasn’t so damn useful and so damn free. Must… re…sist…
That’s what you can expect when using a hosted service that doesn’t let you backup your settings and data. [/end smart ass comment mode]
Here’s a message from Google regarding the problem http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Web_Search_Help-Personalizing/msg/8b91d7361a074343