Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2020 Google services outages


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep and consider renaming. Most of the delete !voters expressed concerns over tying three events in a year together, but there was a general consensus that the larger topic of Google service outages is a notable one and this article could be moved/renamed. Eddie891 Talk Work 00:44, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

2020 Google services outages

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Article covering three temporary Google outages, only linked by happening in the same calendar year. None of the outages seem to have any greater significance, and the only coverage amounts to newspapers saying "yes it's down for everyone" and "it's up again." Mcrsftdog (talk) 22:14, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Events-related deletion discussions. Mcrsftdog (talk) 22:14, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Internet-related deletion discussions. Mcrsftdog (talk) 22:14, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Websites-related deletion discussions. Lightburst (talk) 22:40, 4 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep as these got a decent amount of attention in media. I'd support moving to a general title to include outages throughout all years - but I don't think we have articles for any other years (but if there was a 2021 outage, I'd move the article to something like "List of Google service outages" and include it). Elli (talk &#124; contribs) 23:24, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep - Clearly demonstrates WP:NOTABILITY. Elli's suggestion for a List of Google services outages article is a good idea, though I'm concerned that it may get a bit WP:TOOLONG given the Google has had over the past two decades. InfiniteNexus (talk) 02:59, 5 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep Services like Google and Facebook are now vital for their billions of users and so their outages are quite important. "Don't put all your eggs in one basket"! Andrew🐉(talk) 08:15, 5 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete. None of these outages have anything to do with one another, they were just temporary unrelated blips in unrelated services, and the coverage is very shallow as nom notes - they happened, that's it.  If kept, should be moved/merged into an article like Elli suggests above that is just a chart of all notable Google service outages the media has noticed in any year, and not kept as is which suggests the 2020 outages were related.  SnowFire (talk) 16:00, 5 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete WP:SYNTH, WP:NOTNEWS. Warrant mentioning in the relevant service articles, that's it. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:38, 5 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I see no signs of WP:SYNTH in the article. As a global event, it also passes WP:EVENTCRIT. InfiniteNexus (talk) 23:32, 5 October 2021 (UTC)
 * It is synth, because it implies that the three events were recognised collectively as a signficant, which isn't demonstrated in the sources, which report on the events individually. EVENTCRIT also states A rule of thumb for creating a Wikipedia article is whether the event is of lasting, historical significance, if people are just going to ignore WP:NOTNEWS then we may as well deprecate it. Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:10, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete. This information is too minor for a separate article. Place info in main article. &rarr; StaniStani 04:05, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete: 3 disconnected events that all happened to be related to Google. The outages are no different than a thunderstorm, and have no lasting effect. If the cause of the outage was significant—such as a hack, or sabotage—that would solidify this as an article. As the 3 outages were minor technical faults, there is no lasting significance here. Readers a decade from now won't care about these events. JackFromWisconsin (talk &#124; contribs) 04:22, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete, this is akin to airplane accidents with no injuries or fatalities, which are not kept. These outages have no lasting impact and fails the WP:10YT. Geschichte (talk) 08:02, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep/Move from 2020 Google services outages to Google service outages: The questions facing this article are: 1) Is there any natural reason to join these three events into one article, on the basis of "Google + calendar year"? 2) If not, do any of the outages merit an article on their own? 3) Are these events, together, notable enough for an article? On point (1), I agree that "2020" is arbitrary, but I will argue point (3), that the collection of these events *is* significant and notable as a key piece of historical context of the certainly-notable 2021 Facebook outage.
 * News coverage of the Facebook outage has frequently made reference to the 2020 Google outage(s). It's presumably why this article is in the spotlight right now, and it's certainly the reason behind the *40-fold* increase in pageviews in the last two days. This suggests some degree of lasting significance as of 1 year later (we'll have to see about 10 years). (I would note that WP:10YT is not a litmus test for WP:NOTABILITY, and likewise, WP:EFFECT is a sufficient-but-not-necessary criterion.)
 * Were these 2020 Google outages WP:NOTABLE *before* the Facebook outage? It's a moot point, but I think we can all agree that a service disruption *significant enough* notable -- see also List of major power outages. The sheer number of individuals and businesses that rely upon Gmail, YouTube, Google Calendar, etc. means that any outage of these services is inherently *closer to* notability than outages of other websites.
 * Regardless of these 2020 Google outages' notability as standalone events, they are now notable outside of themselves as part of a larger conversation about dependence on Internet corporations, consolidation, etc. This "larger conversation" includes the US Congress holding hearings and considering legislation. This is the context which makes the details of these Google outages notable: how big or small they were, how brief or extended, avoidable or unavoidable they were.
 * Therefore, the information in this article is worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia. Where? 2021_Facebook_outage#Background? Not great. YouTube#Service_outages and Gmail#Service_outages and ...? No, it should be in a single place. I think it would be appropriate to simply move this article to Google service outages and add any earlier and later events as relevant and notable. SSSheridan (talk) 13:20, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Indeed. There are sensible alternatives to deletion and so our policy WP:PRESERVE applies.  If the structure or title needs work then this is best done by ordinary editing, maintaining the edit history.  Deletion would be an outage – a disruptive break in the service. Andrew🐉(talk) 22:29, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Keep and rename to Google service outages: Per SSSheridan. Article seems good enough to pass WP:GNG, but I believe that it should be expanded to cover notable outages for the past years as well. ASTIG😎  (ICE T • ICE CUBE) 15:45, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Concur unless there is an outage that is as significant as the Facebook outage an article or list of outages would be better. DogsRNice (talk) 18:27, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Qwaiiplayer (talk) 12:12, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Move to Google service outages, an article about 2020 outages specifically doesn't make sense but an article covering all outages should be fine. Jumpytoo Talk 22:00, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep and rename per . The articles passes WP:GNG. The best argument against is WP:SYNTH, however per I believe there is enough notability of outages as a whole (in which these are often mentioned together) to keep and improve Vanteloop (talk) 14:28, 18 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment I also support the suggestion to rename and re-purpose the article to be more generally about Google service outages. Not sure if "List of" should be in the title or not. User:力 (power~enwiki,  π,  ν ) 17:34, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep evidently Google service outages is a notable topic. I'm happy for the article to be renamed. Regarding the suggestion to merge, Google is 200,000 bytes long. It doesn't need more information stuffed into it. NemesisAT (talk) 20:35, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment. If the inclusion criteria at List of major power outages were a guideline applying to all utilities then this page would easily meet it. SpinningSpark 19:07, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep and repurpose to List of Google outages, or even more generally to List of cloud service outages with inclusion criteria similar to List of major power outages. A book chapter "Risk management in the cloud and cloud outages" has a table of outages on page 1728 covering 2008 to 2013.  "Why Does the Cloud Stop Computing?: Lessons from Hundreds of Service Outages" covers 597 unplanned outages from 2009 to 2015. These outages have huge economic significance, for Google as well as its users; this book says "Just a few days earlier, in an unrelated outage, Google's home page briefly went offline, costing the company more than half a million dollars in lost ad revenue in just five minutes". SpinningSpark</b> 19:47, 24 October 2021 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. <b style="color:red">Please do not modify it.</b> Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.