It was only a few minutes of down-time just before midnight on Friday (UK time) but it had a major impact.. After all Google has organised all the world's information as promised. When it stops organising, it matters.

By some measures Web page traffic dropped by around 40 per cent for those few minutes. But Google users would have noticed most - out went Google Mail and Google documents. Out too, of course, Google's various money-making activities. Some estimates put its losses over those few minutes at around $500,000 in lost ads and sponsorship. Nice organising work if you can get it.

As is my habit I was at my screen for a final information organising session of my own and saw that my Gmail had stopped fetching but assumed it was my ancient Mac OS playing up again.