Welcome to Ask Jerry
Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I’m Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.
Ask Jerry is a column where we answer your burning Android/tech questions with the help of long-time Android Central editor Jerry Hildenbrand.
I’m also really good at researching data about everything — that’s a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I’d love to talk about them.
Huge Microsoft Windows outage disrupts services globally
This is what happens when you send out an update to everyone at the same time.
I was readying this article when last Friday’s Microsoft outage happened and the timing couldn’t have been better. I want to make it clear that Microsoft had nothing to do with thousands of Windows Servers crashing Friday morning and the update that broke everything came from a third-party software vendor named CrowdStrike that provides Windows Server security services. In the end, it didn’t matter because a single bad update caused global chaos when it went out to everyone at once.
Google tries to prevent this from happening by slowly rolling out software changes and monitoring what effect they have on the folks who have received them.
It’s been this way since the beginning. Back in 2014 Google Executive Dan Morrill, one of the most recognizable Android developers and part of the original Android team at Google, explained why it’s done and how.
Rollouts are conducted in phases. Typically they start at 1% of devices for around 24 – 48 hours; we watch the return rates and resulting device check-ins and error reports (if any), and make sure nothing looks wrong before sending it to more. Then typically it goes to 25%, 50%, 100% over the course of a week or two.
Google knows that no matter how much it tests a new piece of software there is a chance it will break things once it’s released to everyone with an Android phone. Pixel phones (in this case) aren’t very popular but many of the changes in the monthly update for them are also incorporated into Android itself, with the potential to reach almost every phone around the world.
By slowly pushing out a change, and then waiting to see if it breaks anything, the damage is minimized. There have been botched software rollouts. Plenty of them. In most cases, the software was quickly recalled, and whatever caused the problem was fixed, tested, and then slowly rolled out again to make sure it worked.
This is standard practice from Google, Apple, Samsung, and almost every other company that makes phones and tablets. Software is developed and tested in-house, then sent out to a limited number of beta testers, and once everything seems OK it’s sent out slowly to gauge its performance.
This is also why I like to stress that most people really shouldn’t install any beta software on a device they want to use. It is expected that things will break and is an important part of this process.
It’s frustrating to wait for anything you want to try. Especially when it gets hyped by Google and websites like Android Central. But it’s a lot less frustrating that having a phone that stops working. Let’s hope Google doesn’t decide to stop the slow rollout of new software.
