Google is down, All Google services, from Meet to YouTube, do not work, neither from the mobile nor from the computer. Google Assistant does not work either, ergo you cannot use Google’s connected speakers and therefore you cannot control the home automation system as you normally would: with your voice. It turns out that Google has crashed and not only can I not join a video call, but I also cannot turn on the office lights.
My office has four lights and all four are connected to the Google Nest Hub, the model with a screen. Whenever I need to turn on the light I say “OK Google, turn the light on” or “OK Google, turn on the overhead lamp.” Either that, or I get up and turn on the bulbs using the screen shortcut. Neither option works right now, which leads us to think that, perhaps, we are not yet fully prepared to have absolutely everything connected and without a conventional alternative.
When the light depends on having the Internet
To say that I live in the dark if Google goes down is half true, and more so now that there is some light in the street and luckily there is an analog switch on the wall that allows me to force the bulbs to turn on. As any smart bulb user will know, to control the bulb remotely it is necessary to have the switch always on and turn off the bulb from the app or using your voice. The light bulb then stays connected and lights up when it receives the order.
The thing is that the order, in the case of using Google Assistant as an assistant, comes through Google Assistant. If Google Assistant does not work, because all Google services are down, the order is not processed, the bulbs do not light and you are left in the dark. The same thing happened a few days ago when part of Amazon’s servers crashed and devices such as Roombas and connected doorbells stopped working. The magic of the Internet of Things.
And that’s the problem: that when everything depends on having a connection to a specific service, in this case from Google, if that service goes down the whole system stops working. That, right now, in my situation, is not a major problem because I have the analog wall switches, but we can think of having the house lock connected, a surveillance system, a thermostat (like the Nest, which does not work right now) or any more vital device. If the server goes down, the device is rendered useless.
We can take the same thing to a more extreme and futuristic case: having the whole home connected and interconnected, like that concept that LG taught us a few weeks ago. If we ditch the analog switches and rely on even the switch being able to communicate with devices over the Internet, the house literally doesn’t fully work. We can’t turn on the lights, we can’t open a door, we can’t do anything that would cause device A to communicate with device B.
But it goes further. Right now neither Google Classroom nor Google Meet work, so it is not feasible to give online classes in the case that these platforms are used. Gmail is not going either, so no emails. Google Photos down, Google Drive down, and even Google Stadia down, so no playing ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ in the cloud.
In short, what these types of falls show is that full digitization is still far from coming and far from being feasible. At least now it is still necessary to have a traditional plan B, something that allows us to interact with our home if Google / Amazon / Microsoft services goes down. And it is not something minor, because AWS (Amazon), Azure (Microsoft) and Google account for 58% of the market for web infrastructure.