Google Doesn't Fear Bugs, It Fears...Cows

Aadhya Khatri - May 25, 2020


Google Doesn't Fear Bugs, It Fears...Cows

For a tech company like Google, you may think what it fears the most is bugs right? Wrong, the search engine giant's latest threat is cows

For a tech company like Google, you may think what it fears the most is bugs right? Wrong, the search engine giant recently has to deal with a pressing issue caused by cows, which disrupt the network responsible for delivering its service worldwide.

Google fiber cables cows
Recently Google has to deal with a pressing issue caused by cows

As stated in a series of posts on Twitter of Urs Hölzle, senior vice president of technical infrastructure for Google, the company noticed some brief fiber path outages in Oregon, US.

The company has a data center there hosting essential services like Drive and Gmail. The reason behind these outages are the fiber cables go along the power lines rather than being buried underground.

These cables’ position makes them vulnerable to storms or when trees fall down on them. However, even if they fall to the ground, they will function just fine, until some cows pass by.

When gazing cows accidentally step on the cables and temporarily bent them, that is enough to prevent data from passing through. So apparently, some hungry cows can threat the infrastructure of one of the world’s largest tech companies.

Google data center oregon cows
Google's data center in Oregon

Google could not imagine what could possibly cause the outages until it sent someone to the field to find out.

The infrastructure that makes the digital services we are using possible seems to be almost invisible to us as it operates in the background, out of our sight. The incident reminds us, and Google, that the service might be digital but there is physical infrastructure vital for its existence.

Whenever you send something, that data will be carried across the ocean by cables. Google has to deal with issues caused by animals before, this time, it was sharks as they loved to bite the cables under the sea.

Google now has 8 data centers placed at different locations all over the world and 13 in the US. With these centers close to customers, Google can lower the time it takes to load data and avoid congestion when data is carried from one center to another.

The company recently collaborated with Facebook to build a high-speed sub-sea cable system from the US to Taiwan. Another system, named 2Africa, promises to reduce load time for the African region with up to 16 connections with the capacity of 18- terabits each second.

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