Nothing this Monday hinted that we would witness what it looks like when everything that serves as an indispensable support in our daily lives, which we take for granted, disappears. The beginning of the week, precisely at a time when most people along this geographical longitude are most active and productive, was marked by the interruption of all services provided by Google.

The pandemic dragged even those who weren’t particularly fond of it into the world of online communication, and Monday noon sounded like the ideal time for a virtual meeting in a season designated for making plans and discussing the first steps after flipping the calendar leaf. You joined the meeting via the Meet application, it was your turn to present, a presentation you had prepared for the entire weekend, and then, in an instant, like in the time of old telephone switchboards, the connection suddenly dropped.

While fearing that your disappearance from the network might be interpreted as an inability to overcome stage fright or a lack of information, you desperately tried to email the other participants of the virtual meeting to inform them about your connection problem, but then Gmail betrayed you. Desperate, you went to YouTube to distract your thoughts with some music, but even that didn’t work…

This, or something similar, was how the day looked for most of the working population of Europe and some late-night stories from America – a day that showed that we can do without conferences, nights out, travels, celebrations, and friendly hugs for almost a whole year, but we can’t do without what Google provides for even an hour.

Social media seemed like the only window to the world for most internet users – and this tech giant shut down its Google+ network as soon as it realized that competing with Facebook was futile. This is the only segment where Google admitted defeat and decided to give up on something that never really took off, turning its focus to what was destined for global popularity. Concerned users and meme posts flooded social media platforms, while big companies raced to make the most of this break for marketing messages.

After some amusing moments to pass the time, the question of global dependence on just one major tech service provider and its ecosystem arose. This incident partially exposed the problem of centralization within the same entity, even when it operates in a decentralized manner with the help of about twenty available services, further raising concerns about business continuity and information accessibility.

It’s probably becoming clearer to many now why the institutions of the European Union have been so persistent over the past decade in their efforts to establish rules that not even global players will be exempt from. Regardless of whether someone thinks the EU is exaggerating in its efforts to achieve certain goals, in this case, it’s extremely important for consumers to understand the significance of technological centralism and how such circumstances affect consumer freedom. In a world of almost complete global connectivity, Google has an absolute monopoly in certain segments.

The company restored the operation of all services that experienced disruptions after about an hour, but what was partly lost is the trust in its ability to safeguard everything users want to be preserved, along with an open question about the extent to which they share or take on the risk of changes that may occur in the future, potentially resulting in the loss of digital assets.

These circumstances prompted reflections on the role of digital technology in our lives, as for a moment, it seemed as if the world had stopped turning, when in fact, only the services of one company were not functioning for almost an hour. Considering the number of users affected by this, everything indeed seemed as if the world had come to a halt, as most people don’t have any backup options ready in such situations.

Google isn’t the only one forcing us to worry about the extent to which we actually control our own digital space in this case. Just think about all the digital repositories on services through which we access certain movie or music content. It probably happened to you at least once to read a message on the screen stating that certain content is (no longer) available in the country from which you are accessing it.

Therefore, we can’t watch a movie, series, or listen to music we want via the internet whenever we want, even if we pay for some services, nor can we make virtual visits to museums and galleries everywhere, even though we’ve been reassured countless times that “everything is on the internet”, which means that our access to culture and art is reduced to what companies managing the digital space, financed by millions of our small subscriptions, decide we should watch and listen to. Those people who talk about buying vinyl records might seem less strange to you now, not to mention those who are happy because they managed to buy the first DVD editions of movies whose scenes were later edited and changed, as was done, for example, in the Star Wars series.

Google’s outage isn’t the first nor the last we’ve identified in the online space as a temporary service disruption, although it’s undoubtedly the biggest so far, as it lasted relatively long compared to anything else in the internet world where seconds sometimes determine entire processes, and it affected the largest number of users. Similar outages, although shorter in duration, have occurred with Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, which means we can expect them in the future as well.

It’s difficult to predict what kind of crash is possible in the online world in the future because even if the same technical problem recurs, other circumstances make it have different effects. If Twitter, which has recently become the center of all political life, experiences something similar to what happened to Google the day before yesterday, we probably won’t feel as if life has stopped that day, but at least for a short while, we’ll experience the beauty of engaging in other life topics.