Google error break half of internet in Japan

When a company the size of Google makes a tiny mistake, the outcome could have immense repercussions – and this is precisely what happened in Japan last week, the Nextweb.com reports.


Last Friday, half the internet in the country suddenly shut down after the Big G accidentally botched a Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) around noon local time. The origin of the blunder was a number of falsely announced peer prefixes sent to Verizon.

Shortly after the faulty rerouting request went through, numerous users of internet providers NTT Communications and KDDI Corp. were unable to connect to the web – or experienced significantly slower surfing speeds.

Google has since owned up to its mistake, assuming full responsibility for the blackout.

“We set wrong information for the network and, as a result, problems occurred. We modified the information to the correct one within eight minutes,” a company spokesperson told The Asahi Shimbun. “We apologize for causing inconvenience and anxieties.”


The interruption lasted for several hours until the internet heavyweight eventually managed to resolve the issue.