Google's unprecedented lapse

On August 3, a bug in Google's automated security system disabled hundreds, and probably thousands, of Blogger blogs. ¶ 

Robot run amok! Google fixed the bug two days later, and many are reporting that their blogs have been restored. ¶ 

However, as of today Google has still not explained to English-language bloggers that they must request a review to get their blogs back. Or even that the bug is fixed. ¶ 

Indeed, Google's only explanation or announcement seems to have been in the Spanish-language help community for Blogger, through that community's manager.

Did you get stung by this bug?

The unwarranted suspensions continued for about two days. Since then many affected blogs have been restored. If you were affected,

• request a manual review of your blog using the link that Google provided to you.
• be patient, as not every suspension is unwarranted and Google is reviewing them all case-by-case.

Don't panic

Since the bug is fixed, we need have no apprehensions about "triggering" this by working on our blogs: publishing blog posts, adding sidebar widgets, even making theme modifications.

You might consider this as a warning to back up your blog and to make sure you have up-to-date recovery information in your Google account.

The baffling part

I don't usually write about these outages unless they turn out to be intentional (like the affair of the quick-edit pencil). 

The story is usually there was this bug and then it got fixed. Not much I can add to that! Bugs come and go all the time. 

But the way this unfolded was so extraordinary that I wanted to (1) note it and (2) provide the information from the Spanish-language help community, since it had not been shared generally.

Indeed, the communications failures around this are the most notable features of this story.

Those, not the bug, comprise the "unprecedented lapse."

Notes

"probably thousands": There were hundreds of panicked reports to the Blogger help community. Choose your rule of thumb, does each of those represent three others who do not ask about it in the community? Thirty? Two hundred?

"unprecedented": Google has been quiet about a lot of stuff for which I'd wish for more clarity, especially lately. However, I've been using Blogger since 2008 and cannot think of a zero-information lapse like this.

"request a review": Google's automated system normally makes some errors, and the remedy is to use the link provided by Google to request a manual review by a human.

Owners of blogs without an up-to-date contact email that they check regularly can miss the notification from Google and consequently lose their blogs by not taking this step.

Joseph Ducreux's self portrait, called The Surprise, is in the public domain.