For a few hours last weekend, users looking for information using Google got the error message "This site may harm your computer." This was a result of a human error on Google’s part that resulted in every website being classified as potentially malicious. As expected, Google reacted quickly and fixed the problem. Although, I wasn’t up bright and early on Saturday to encounter this problem, I was wondering what I would do if Google’s search engine was unavailable for a protracted amount of time. It has been quite awhile since I have used any other search engine. My browser defaults to Google’s home page, I am very familiar with the look and feel of their search results and I have even customized some of my search results. I depend on Google solely and totally for my search experience.
The same dependency exists for companies and software/operating systems. With the arrival of cloud computing, this dependency will only deepen. It is time to start thinking seriously about interoperability and portability across clouds. This way, if one of the clouds were to fail, customers can switch seamlessly across clouds. At the least, companies should be making small investments in clouds other than the one they depend on for most of their services.
Now back to my search dependency problem. Where do I find the Yahoo! or Microsoft search engine? :-)