From its origins as a humble search engine in 1998 to a corporation worth $1210 billion in 2020, Google has become part of the fabric of the internet itself.

But such influence brings its own problems. Even small Google outages can cause major disruption, with people unable to access accounts or run their businesses.

To give a non-Google example of internet disruption, an issue with the Fastly content delivery network took down many popular websites in mid-2021. That included Reddit, HMRC, Twitter, Twitch, Amazon, CNN, and eBay.

This showed the dangers of relying on a single provider for a huge part of the internet’s infrastructure.

So with that in mind, what would happen if Google shut down for a day? While there have been outages to parts of Google, such as Google Cloud or Gmail, what about the whole service?

No Google Search

Without Google, there would be no Google Search. It would force users to use search engines like Bing or DuckDuckGo instead.

This would be more of an inconvenience than an outright problem. After all, alternatives exist, such as Yahoo, which predates Google’s dominance of the search engine market. (Yahoo is 28, while Google is 23).

Yahoo’s search engine has a market share that is less than 3% on mobile, representing over 700 million users, compared to Google’s market share, which is over 93%. Google.com had over 90 billion searches last month

But you must remember that most internet searches are for obvious information, such as the dates of the Easter holidays. Having to use a different search engine might be an inconvenience and cause some confusion but would not be a major problem.

However, those using Google as their browser homepage might get very confused

Login Problems using Chrome

If users save their passwords using Google Chrome, they could not access other websites unless they could remember their passwords.

Using a password manager like LastPass or 1Password would avoid this problem.

The lack of Google would lock users out of any accounts that they access using their Google account. This would be unlikely to affect important websites like online banking. But it would still be a major inconvenience.

No Google Maps

No Google would also mean no Google Maps. This would have a massive impact on pedestrians and commuters. In 2019, Google had more than a billion people using Google Maps every month. While many smartphones have their own in-built maps, such as Petal on Huawei, or Apple Maps for iPhones, people still rely on Google Maps.

The lack of live traffic updates would also impact drivers. When Google is operational, drivers can check routes in advance and avoid heavy traffic. This means cars aren’t sitting stationary, pumping out exhaust fumes and adding to local pollution. But without the live traffic updates, drivers would have to rely on radio reports about traffic. The downside here is that you sometimes don’t hear them until you’re already on an affected route.

Google Maps also runs alongside many business listings. Say I search for a steak restaurant near me. Google uses my location to recommend restaurants and it puts them on the map for me.

Without Google Maps, those business recommendations ‘near the user’ would disappear. Users would have to manually comb through search results for the same search using a different search engine.

No Google Home

A Google shutdown would also impact those smart homes that primarily use Google Home as a central control. A 2019 Google Cloud outage caused problems for Nest, its subsidiary company, that operates smart home technology.

Users couldn’t change their thermostat settings. Some smart door locks locked users in, or out, of their homes.

This would have massive repercussions for personal safety, especially if users could not turn on air conditioning during hot weather. Users being unable to leave their properties would offer problems in case of fire or flood within their homes.

Any impact on smart home technology operated by Google might have fatal consequences.

Impact on Website Traffic

A Google shutdown would cause even more problems for businesses and freelancers. No Google also means no Google Ads, amounting to $209.49 billion in 2021. That would have a major impact on website traffic, leading to lost sales and lead generation.

An interruption to Google Ads also means no incoming revenue for Google, representing an estimated $150 million per day, and a subsequent drop in their share prices.

Those businesses that don’t run Google Ads may also suffer problems with their SEO. Many businesses work to boost their website’s performance on Google and neglect the other search engines. Those search engines use different algorithms, so where they’re in the top 3 results on Google, they might be lower down on Bing or Yahoo. This would also impact their website traffic.

No Google Cloud

If businesses run their operations using Google Docs or Google Drive as part of Google Cloud, they would lose access to these tools. This would lead to a loss of business productivity and make it difficult to work unless they have documents available to work on offline.

This would also have a domino effect and impact on other websites as well. In 2021, a Google Cloud outage affected other major websites, including Spotify, Discord, Etsy, and Shopify. Here, there was a problem with its networking services. This would impact those running their businesses on Shopify and Etsy, even if they don’t use Google products themselves, while Spotify going down would impact the royalties artists could earn through streaming.

In 2019, a Google Cloud outage also took YouTube offline for four hours. This led to a 2.5% decrease in views within one hour. That would impact the earning potential of those who make a living through their YouTube channels. It would also remove access to learning resources accessed by schools and colleges.

In December 2020, Gmail suffered two outages within 24 hours, primarily within the US. Surprisingly, the issue didn’t affect Gsuite users with custom domains, so a Google shutdown might at least not impact businesses using their own domains.

The lack of access to these tools would also impact home users, particularly those who rely on Google Drive as a safe form of cloud storage.

Should We Panic?

It’s unlikely that Google would ever shut down in its entirety for a day. As it is, Google is pretty good at restoring connectivity when it has outages. These outages usually only affect one territory or service. They lead to inconvenience, rather than anything more problematic.

But they highlight the dangers of relying so wholly on a single company for our calendars, email, navigation, business documents, and website traffic.

Perhaps this is a friendly reminder to diversify across other platforms. You never know when you might need them.

Header photo by Mitchell Luo on Unsplash