30
Jun

Solution for today’s Google Spreadsheet downtime

As I wrote today Google Spreadsheets were down for several hours (and still are for some users who are getting the “Trying to reach google.com…” error ). If you are still experiencing this error there is a workaround that works for me.

If you have Firebug add-on in your browser (Firefox or Chrome) follow these steps:

  1. Open your browser and login to Google Docs, load a spreadsheet.
  2. Open Firebug and enable Network tab.
  3. (Re)load the spreadsheet that is causing problems.
  4. In Firebug, search for the (red) GET resource that failed to load. You should recognize it by name, it should be “GET test?…” or “GET sorry?…”.
  5. Click on the URL, copy the URL resource.
  6. Load the URL in a new tab.
  7. A Google CAPTCHA will be displayed.
  8. Enter the characters from the image.
  9. Reload the spreadsheet.

This should be it! It worked for me and for my coworker, so let me know in the comments if it works for you!


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30
Jun

Google Spreadsheets down for several hours today

As a company we rely heavily on Google Docs. We have all our documents in the cloud and use them from several locations. Today, however, the working day started with a lemon: Google Spreadsheets refused their obedience. The documents were there, they have opened, but we were not able to edit them.

After a quick search for the error “Trying to reach google.com…” that was displayed on the top of each spreadsheet with ‘latest’ feature turned on I have noticed that many users have the same problem. I have checked the Apps Status and the problem was not reported. Users seeing the error are from different countries, using different browsers and OS, have paid or free Google Docs accounts and arehaving co-workers that see the error as well.

After several hours Google acknowled the error and posted it on the Apps dashboard. The error should affect “less than 3.4%” of all user base. After two posts and some time they have reported:

“Google Spreadsheets service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users in the near future. Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change.”

However, I haven’t noted a change in service and the same the users from the Google Docs Help section that have reported the error. I hope Google fixes the error for everyone soon since it’s not fixed yet at the time of writing this post. The service gets back again for a minute or two every hour, but this is far from full recovery.

Such times are important to ask a question if the cloud services are reliable enough and ready for prime time.

 


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23
Jun

Speed of Firefox 5.0 compared to Chrome 14

Today Firefox 5.0 was released. Since there are not many visible changes I have decided to test the speed again and compare it to the speed of Chrome. I am using Firefox 5.0 final and Chrome 14.0.797.0 dev-m versions.

Here are the results of the Kraken 1.1 test:

Firefox: 8506.5ms +/- 3.6%

Chrome:  6535.9ms +/- 6.9%

Here are the results of the Sunspider 0.9.1 test:

Firefox: 452.6ms +/- 12.7%,

Chrome:  370.4ms +/- 5.8%

I have run the test twice on the same machine, but with different number of running tabs (7 in Chrome, 100+ in Firefox). The numbers above are showing the best result of both runs.

It seems that Chrome 14 is considerably faster than Firefox 5.0. I have repeated the tests with a Firefox 5.0 opened with only 7 tabs and the results were different this time:

Kraken: 7164.3ms +/- 1.1%

Sunspider: 326.7ms +/- 2.1%

It looks like Firefox gets really slow with a large amount of tabs open. I haven’t tested the speed of Chrome with 100+ tabs open because my system can’t take it.

It’s interesting to see that each browser fails the test that it has created or helped create. Overall, Chrome still feels faster.

 7227.5ms +/- 6.0%


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