Downside of the Google App Engine relying on Google Apps - Horror Story
Eaden
In order to host an application on Google App Engine you need to add
your domain to a Google Apps account. If anything goes wrong with your
Google Apps account, your Google App Engine sites can be affected and
you have no where to turn for support. Your apps are not accessible
from your domain ( you can still reach them from app.appspot.com
however ).
For example, my Google Apps account broke. I can't even get to the
login page and get an error saying there is no Google Apps set up for
this domain name. However I had been using the account for a number of
years. I cannot even upgrade to premium support as it is impossible to
log in.
Because Google Apps can only be hosted by google, even if you have
backups you can not easily move your App to another server while the
issue is sorted out. So far I have had about 15 hours downtime on my
app.
I'm not sure what I'd recommend but there needs to be better channels
of support for Google Apps if it is to be part of Google App Engine.
Regards
Eaden
More than 48 hours later, even after an email from Brett, my app is
still down.
I've done all I can do, emailed everyone I can think of and I don't
even have a support ticket number to show for it.
Relying on Google App Engine for business critical things at this
stage is not a good idea in my opinion.
Google App Engine charges now, but when you're paying there should be
better support.
Regards
Eaden
Brett Slatkin
> More than 48 hours later, even after an email from Brett, my app is
> still down.
>
> I've done all I can do, emailed everyone I can think of and I don't
> even have a support ticket number to show for it.
>
> Relying on Google App Engine for business critical things at this
> stage is not a good idea in my opinion.
> Google App Engine charges now, but when you're paying there should be
> better support.
I understand your frustration. In this case the issue was related to
spam/abuse and a violation of the Google Apps Terms of Service, which
is why there was a delay (as you can hopefully understand). You should
have received some follow-up communication by now explaining the
details of how to resolve this. Let me know if not.
-Brett
Eaden
On Mar 5, 7:51 pm, Brett Slatkin <brett-appeng...@google.com> wrote:
> I understand your frustration. In this case the issue was related to
> spam/abuse and a violation of the Google Apps Terms of Service, which
> is why there was a delay (as you can hopefully understand). You should
> have received some follow-up communication by now explaining the
> details of how to resolve this. Let me know if not.
accused by a 3rd party of being used for phishing - it wasn't, but one
accusation was enough to get the whole account shut down.
Thanks Brett you've been helpful and I hope that my situation will
provide lessons for the Google App engine team and Google App team
about this as shutting off an account without warning or communication
isn't expected ( although within the TOS of google ), but say if
you're a paying Google App Engine customer ( and I could have been, it
wouldn't have made a difference ) the same thing would have happened.
Regards
Eaden
Brett Slatkin
I've worked with the Google Apps team to get our abuse notification
policy changed. In the future, customers should be notified 48 hours
in advance of any detected abuse. You will be able to respond to this
notification if you think it is erroneous. The behavior that Eaden saw
with his domain should not happen to anyone again.
Sorry again for the trouble and thanks for your patience.
-Brett
Google App Engine Team
Lawrence Fitzpatrick
On Mar 18, 2:58 pm, Brett Slatkin <brett-appeng...@google.com> wrote:
> In the future, customers should be notified 48 hours
> in advance of any detected abuse.
Brett Slatkin
Haha, yeah sorry this sounds like we can see into the future. =) What
I meant is once we detect abuse, we will notify customers and give
them a few days to respond before we take any action.
Adrian Scott . com
I am not clear on why we should have to rely on Google Apps for domain
pointing.
We also need some capability for redundancy of some sort. What is
currently possible for redundancy, assuming something goes bad with
google apps?
E.g. Could we change DNS to fwd to blah.appspot.com -- was that doable
in your case?
Which brings up another point, for remember me logins, should we set
cookies for both x.appspot.com and x.com? Sounds like it. (Another
feature to add to http://www.adrianremembersme.com/ ... )
This is extremely critical, so let's figure out some best practices
for people to follow.
Anyone who's had a popular site that includes an invite member
capability knows how many spam reports are received... so this may be
a nice band-aid and step forward, but a comprehensive system for
redundancy is needed...
-A
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