You are right. It's unfair (and all too easy) for someone from the outside to point their finger and say, "Bad! They should have done X." However, the reality

You are right. It's unfair (and all too easy) for someone from the outside to point their finger and say, "Bad! They should have done X." However, the reality is that Google has positioned themselves such that they have quickly become a utility. This goes beyond search, they are a communications network (email, chat) and an ad service among other things. How many websites depend solely on Google AdSense for their revenue? Just like electricity, telephone service, and other utilities, we have come to depend on them for living our daily lives. Loss of service at a large scale cannot be tolerated. This may have been a relatively minor event, but the point remains that it still seems much too easy for such events to take place. I feel that Google should be one of the companies pushing technology in this area forward. Hopefully they will release information on how they plan to prevent this sort of event from occurring in the future.