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Comment by shrikant | Hacker News Reader

I believe this is because of Reddit.

Some chap (maybe an HTC employee?) posted on the /r/Android subreddit that he was giving away a couple of HTC smartphones[1], and all one had to do to enter the giveaway way fill out their Reddit username in the linked Google Spreadsheet.

This post has now been deleted from the front page as well as the subreddit -- I'm not sure why.

[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1air46/hi_reddit_i_...

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lol a bunch of Reddit traffic cannot pull down Google's servers. When a doc has heavy traffic, Google has ways of limiting usage of doc by making it read only), but a Reddit thread can never pull down a file sharing site. Esp big ones like drive, dropbox and skydrive.

How could one spreadsheet bring down Drive?

Thousands of people attempting to write to it at the same time? Maybe Drive wasn't prepared for such an eventuality.

In any case, I'm just speculating based on the mighty odd timing.

It can't. that just ridiculous reason. Google Drive can handle pretty much all what reddit can handle.Currently, it's got around 3000 points. it still not reaching the reddit frontpage yet. i don't think that that kind of traffic can make Google Drive down. that just silly. We are talking about google. not just random start up on HN.

A little OT: but the article in question had reached the front page. It was then "deleted" by mods.

A mod removal on Reddit just removes a post from any visibility, and doesn't actually delete it. So people with the link can still see the thread, but it won't be discoverable.

Sure, that could crash one spreadsheet and maybe the server that tries to serve it, but send the whole fleet flapping?

Interesting. It appears the contest was held previously and it brought down Drive then.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1air46/hi_reddit_i_...

This can't be the issue, even if it's get 10k submission per seconds, it can't make the system like Google Drive down. come on. that just ridiculous.

About as ridiculous as shutting down Jabber federation on GTalk because that was the only measure Google could take to limit spammy invites.

Google has come down a lot from their pedestal last week. In my book, this Jabber federation issue put them on par with "two teenagers in a garage".

So, ridiculous as it may be, today I believe one spreadsheet can bring GDrive down. Last week I had a different opinion.

They shut down federated invitations, not federated conversations, I thought?

That can't be right. A file sharing site from Google cannot handle a Reddit thread? Seriously?

I agree. Google Drive supports an entire world of Chromebooks, startups, small businesses, and quite a few large businesses. I can't imagine the traffic from a Reddit thread would bring the service down. Even if the doc had something malicious in it (which I doubt is possible because Drive doesn't allow for executable code), they surely have failsafes to wall off any bad files from the rest of the service.

Reading tea leaves?

I find that highly unlikely given how Google's services are built.

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