Web Application Outage Details

Posted byDanPosted inSimplenote

Tuesday at about 4:50pm Pacific time our web application at app.simplenote.com went down, displaying a generic 404 error message. We discovered shortly after that Google Cloud Platform, which hosts the web application, had shut down the site due to a DMCA notice for allegedly infringing content that appeared in published notes. We worked with Google to rectify the issue as quickly as possible and they reinstated the app yesterday morning.

No data was lost during this outage. Thanks for your patience as we get everything up and running again! You may see some delays in sharing or publishing notes as the service gets back up to speed.

Happy noting,
The Simplenote Team

Published by Dan

Pokémon Trainer at Automattic, Inc.

8 thoughts on “Web Application Outage Details”

  1. So were Google correct? Was some content removed? Did Google warn you before taking down the web app? Was it the action of an over-zealous Google employee?

    1. No over-zealous employees! Just a situation that we weren’t prepared for. We have the process set up to handle these DMCA notices properly from now on.

  2. DMCA sucks. Google must be getting millions of DMCA requests and I bet they can’t verify this at all! This is to be blamed COMPLETELY on GOOGLE.

    Google can’t be correct as this is a TEXT ONLY note taking app. May be some user added some links to infringing content.

    But question is how was Google able to crawl that? I was strictly using as my personal stash. May be the publish / share option has something to do with this.

  3. But I am really glad that the service is back up! Simplenote has been part of my online life for way too long!

    1. Our publishing system was hit hard with the outage. We made improvements to get it working faster yesterday and it should be working normally again in a few hours. Thanks again for your patience.

  5. I’m new user here. I was like what? Is this real? I’m in love with this simplenote coz I need web version and app on my phone. Which is this is the best for me.
    I don’t like Gugel keep coz it has no sort by alphabet
    And has limit 1999 words 😦
    But simplenote.com is amazing for all !

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