Google dun goofed

Brian Ambrozy 12 Feb, 2011 at 2:28pm ET Article published in Tech

MAKE IT STOP

Looks like quite a few unhappy people got woken up in the wee hours to the alert of endless emails flooding their inboxes. The culprit?

Google.

We’re not sure if it was a misconfiguration or a human error, but a mailing list called chrome-notebook-pilot-users@googlegroups.com suddenly turned active; and it seems like maybe every person in the US who has received a Google Chromebook (CR-48) started receiving emails. Of course, when that happens, people start replying with things like “What is this” and “STOP THE EMAILS”, which perpetuate the problem as those get sent to, well, everybody on the list.

I woke to hundreds of emails (I am one of the lucky ones that got a CR-48), but not everyone on the list seems to have gotten one. In fact, many of the emails were from hopefuls: “Does this mean I’m getting a Chromebook”?

The emails began around 3:20 AM EST, and went for about an hour; but oh what an hour.

“Thanks for waking me up, Google.” “WHAT A FAIL” and “Noooooooooo!” were all subject lines.

Hopefully those who don’t have CR-48s yet, but did end up on the mailing list will be receiving Chromebooks soon. Me, I had to spend a few minutes annoyingly selecting emails to trash. Thanks, Google!

(Free CR-48. Worth it.)

Update 02/13/2011:

Google sent out an apology and explanation to the list. Here it is, verbatim:

Earlier this morning, you may have received a large number of emails from chrome-notebook-pilot-users@googlegroups.com regarding the Chrome notebook Pilot program user forum. We apologize for this inconvenience, and you will not receive any more messages from this address. Instructions for deleting these messages are at the end of this email.

What happened? We planned to launch our Chrome Notebook Pilot forum next week to all users who had been selected for the Pilot program. Last night, around midnight Pacific time, a user discovered this forum and posted a message. Unfortunately, we had misconfigured this forum to email every post to every member. Thus, the first post started an avalanche of responses. Some messages were unsubscribe requests, others were thoughtful comments or questions, but all of them were emailed to every user. We have since deleted this group.

We’ve created a brand new user forum, which you can sign up for here:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/chrome-notebook-pilot

Rest assured: you will not be added to this forum unless you sign up using the link above.

The goal of the forum is to provide a centralized place for Pilot users to share their Chrome notebook experiences and tips. In addition, with a centralized forum, our team can more effectively respond to your questions and feedback.

If you are receiving this email and have not yet received a Cr-48, you should be hearing from us soon. Again, our apologies for the flood of emails, and we hope you will join us at the new forum.

Chrome Notebook Team

Comments

12 Feb 2011 ~ 2:35pm Snarkasm "Thanks for waking me up"? Who are these people that wake up because an email arrived?

"Everything's amazing and nobody's happy."
12 Feb 2011 ~ 2:40pm obviousanswerisobvious @Snarkasm

What you don't have a smartphone? What is wrong with you?
12 Feb 2011 ~ 2:46pm Snarkasm I do have a smart phone. I'm also intelligent enough to use Tasker, which I configured to silence alerts overnight. Keep trying to be clever, though.
12 Feb 2011 ~ 5:13pm Cliff_Forster I'll end all probable debate on this thread now. Snark and I agree, and hence, it is law.... or at least policy, or perhaps a slight mandate, anyway you look at it.

"Everything's amazing and nobody's happy."
12 Feb 2011 ~ 6:44pm mas0n I too fail to understand the outrage. I woke up to hundreds of emails. I searched for chrome-notebook-pilot, selected all, marked as read and got on with my breakfast.

5 seconds of confusion followed by 30 seconds of work. Thanks for the notebook, Google!
12 Feb 2011 ~ 7:52pm Kwitko I believe this will cause consequences to never be the same.
12 Feb 2011 ~ 8:36pm Winfrey It caused me to my family on accident.
13 Feb 2011 ~ 8:07am primesuspect Updated with new info
13 Feb 2011 ~ 8:31am RyanMM I accidentally the whole mailing list!
13 Feb 2011 ~ 10:37pm BuddyJ GG Google. Way to backtrace it.
18 Feb 2011 ~ 7:47am RichD We had this same issue at my work three days after! In our case someone sent an email to the driver self certification distribution list, thinking it was a mail box. This then went to every employee in the company who is registered as driving at work including staff in Bangalore, Irelad and the Middle East as well as the CEO, and as you say it is perpetuated by morons using the reply to all button.

I was quite amusing though!