Google: Friendly Giant or another NSA? Updated.

Google everything was down for about three minutes August 16th. Worldwide internet traffic dropped 40%
What does the transparent administration of Google have to say about that?  "The web giant is refusing to discuss why all its services from Google Search to Gmail to YouTube stopped working across the world."
Not only do they know more than we think proper about ourselves, we now depend on them when we want to know about others.

Update: Google was paid millions by NSA to cover administrative costscomplying with all the NSA requests. (The Guardian).

Google.com was down for a few minutes between 23:52 and 23:57 BST on 16th August 2013. This had a huge effect in the number of pageviews coming into GoSquared's real-time tracking - around a 40% drop   (BST= British  Summer  Time)