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Google and Blogger Down for More than 24 Hours in Germany March 6 - March 7 2008 : Was the Pentagon the Cause?

By Andis Kaulins

Google.com (USA), which we use, and Blogger were not accessbile to us here in Germany for more than 24 hours starting yesterday afternoon - and as far as we could tell by asking around, also not to others. On the other hand, sites like google.co.uk and google.de were available.

We were thus unable, however, to access our Gmail account at Google directly (although we ultimately did manage to read our emails via Thunderbird - why that worked and why direct access did not work is an interesting technical question which we can not answer).

We were also unable to post here on LawPundit, which is hosted in Germany, but is posted via Blogger in the States, which is connected to Google, so that Blogger was down as well.

We wonder whether this has to do with the recent request by the Pentagon that Google remove online images of streets near U.S. military bases, which may have required the search of Google-based websites and blogs, and that might have required the servers to be blocked.

We do not have any quarrel with that request of the Pentagon and understand the rationale fully, but we do find it totally incorrect, if the above is the case, that no notice was given by Google to the international community of the 24-hour unavailability of these services.

Here is an interesting legal question: would anyone relying on Gmail for email service have a cause of action, e.g. for the loss of business, due to their inability to access their Gmail account because of an intentional blocking of the service by Google for the reason given above?

Full post as published by LawPundit on March 07, 2008 (boomark / email).