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As we reported in our Twitter feed, Google users had to put up with yet another service interruption when Google News went down for about 2 hours this morning starting at 8:30am EDT.  Users from all over the world reported the outage.  Some got a “503 Server Error” while others were able to access the service but found it was incapable of displaying pages correctly.  Still others got “Server Error” messages when any link on the site was clicked By just after 10AM service had been fully restored.

Google posted this on their official blog:

“Earlier today, Google News was temporarily unavailable for some users. Beginning at around 5:35 AM, Pacific Time, some users began experiencing slower-than-usual service from Google News, and between approximately 6:25 AM and about 7:00 AM, Pacific Time, a small percentage of users saw a 503 server error, along with a message to try their requests again later. This issue has now been resolved. We know how important Google News is to our users, so we take issues like this very seriously. We apologize to those users who were affected.”

Today’s outage was just the latest in a long string which started late last year.  While they are quick to apologize on their blog, each outage adds a new dent in the service’s armor as they try to position themselves as the world’s most reliable web service.  Are they really?  If you’re a diehard Google user it sure doesn’t seem like it.

Google’s never really given a full explanation of why they keep having these outages, instead blaming them on server glitches, traffic issues or in the case of the glitch that caused every site in Google’s search engine to be labeled malicious, human error.

Is Google getting too big for its britches?  In its eagerness to be all things to all people are they simply trying to do more than they can handle?  Let me know your thoughts!

Read [PCWorld]