What Happens If Google Shuts Down For A Day?

Google is quite like the sun that a vast majority of people use and depend upon every day for various official and personal work. Google too has experienced outages in the past, but these were limited to specific geographies and resolved quite quickly. Sometimes it makes us wonder what would happen if Google shuts down for a day. Well, the sky certainly will not come crashing down. However, there could be quite a few issues that people can face if Google shuts down for a day.

Search related hassles – With Google Search no longer available, it may become difficult to find information online. It’s true that alternatives such as Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, etc., are available. However, not many are aware of these search platforms. Moreover, the overall experience is much better on Google Search, as compared to other search engines.

Significant communication barrier – A large number of people, organizations and small to medium enterprises (SMEs) rely on Gmail for a wide variety of communications. This ecosystem will almost entirely collapse if Google shuts down for a day. Business and organizational communications via Gmail will be among the worst affected by Google outage.

Google passwords – On Google Chrome, many people save their passwords for various sites. If they have signed out on the same day when Google Services become unavailable, they may not be able to log in to various websites. Many people rely almost entirely on Google to save their password. They may not have created any other backup for security reasons. In such situations, a Google outage for 24 hours can create significant challenges. People will have to do the hard work of resetting passwords of sites that they need urgently.

Social media tsunami – Even brief Google outages have led to frantic conversations on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, etc. If Google shuts down for a day, the internet will be flooded with all types of memes and jokes. There will be plenty of conspiracy theories as well, giving explanations to what and who may have caused Google to crash.

Loss of ad revenue – From Google’s perspective, a 24-hour shutdown will be a major business loss. It is estimated that Google earns around $400 million everyday via its ad service. This is the reason why Google outages are rare and quite brief.

Apart from official or other important or urgent work, we believe things will be largely manageable if Google shuts down for a day. There are various other communication platforms available, which support both text and file sharing. These can be used as an alternative till Google services are restored.