Friend of mine had her ticket timeout twice because Google Checkout and Wallet kept breaking.
How do they still have these problems after all these years?
Google I/O 2013 Registration Sells Out In 49 Minutes
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Re: Google I/O 2013 Registration Sells Out In 49 Minutes
#32Given that 99% of the people I could see on Twitter were not able to get through to the checkout, 49 minutes feels like a relatively meaningless number. I suspect that if the system actually worked properly it would have sold out in 30 seconds.
I'm not sure how you would even distinguish it from never being open. I tried to sign up at 7:01 and it said, "Registration closed." I reloaded 5 times and at one point saw the form but clicking through lead to the first 500 I've ever seen from Google.
How can they not scale this? This is 3rd-year-in-college 2 week project level scaling challenges.
Re: Google I/O 2013 Registration Sells Out In 49 Minutes
#33I was extremely frustrated that, while I had been "reserved" a ticket, the payment repeatedly timed out and I was kicked back to the "we're looking for tickets" page. Oh well, I guess that's what happens when hundreds of thousands of people are DDoSing a page.
You're definitely not the only one. My order was canceled due to "unable to notify merchant of this order". Very frustrating.
Re: Google I/O 2013 Registration Sells Out In 49 Minutes
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
"they know that the demand considerably exceeds supply." That's true in 2013 (clearly), but was that always true?
Yes, ever since they started to give away cool gear at IO.
Interesting. Seems to me that giving away stuff is a bad idea then since the wrong people will be attracted.
Re: Google I/O 2013 Registration Sells Out In 49 Minutes
#35Given that 99% of the people I could see on Twitter were not able to get through to the checkout, 49 minutes feels like a relatively meaningless number. I suspect that if the system actually worked properly it would have sold out in 30 seconds.
I'm not sure how you would even distinguish it from never being open. I tried to sign up at 7:01 and it said, "Registration closed." I reloaded 5 times and at one point saw the form but clicking through lead to the first 500 I've ever seen from Google. How can they not scale this? This is 3rd-year-in-college 2 week project level scaling challenges.
It's an interesting problem... before virtual servers. The traffic spike Google receives for events and Nexus device launches must look like a DOS attack. We don't know where the bottleneck lies, but considering the 500 server error I received on my first spin of the wheel, I don't think it was a network problem. I wonder if the load balancers are effectively distributing things? Since it seems that so many people got dropped at transfer points, maybe they just need an improved queuing system so they can process requests without putting strain on registration systems or Google Wallet?
Maybe they should rewrite this system with Go? Then they could reduce the number of servers they use from 30 down to 2? :-)
Re: Google I/O 2013 Registration Sells Out In 49 Minutes
#36Not entirely true story what the headline is implying. It's not that all who logged in before 7:50 PDT got the ticket, I waited and waited and kept on trying without any luck. I started at 6:59 am and gave up at 7:38 am.
Re: Google I/O 2013 Registration Sells Out In 49 Minutes
#37I got a ticket-- been lucky the last four years.
Frustrating experience every year.
I "got" a ticket three times, but Google Wallet times out and wouldn't let me buy the first two. The third time around (after waiting in the queue), I noticed an ajax request being fired when you clicked the "buy" button (which would become disabled.... it would time out and it would still sit there as if it were doing something. Reenabled the button, pressed it again... it fired off the request... timed out... timed out... then finally it made it and kicked me to the rest of the registration process. Apparently refreshing the "buy" Google Wallet page would work too.
Google Wallet fail.
Re: Google I/O 2013 Registration Sells Out In 49 Minutes
#38Three people (including me) from my team were attempting to get tickets. We were all on the page 30 minutes before opening and entered the queue within seconds of opening. 2 of us never got anything other than the looking for tickets page multiple times. 1 of us got to the payment page on one attempt only to have it fail. It's frustrating that we should each spend 1.5 hours of time to babysit what is essentially a lo…
Two in our company were on it also. Started within seconds of it opening and went through the 6-minute process 7 or 8 times. Neither of us even got to the Wallet stage.
I managed to get one last year on my third attempt but I was using multiple browser windows. They had a clear warning about that this time, so we stuck to one tab each in the vain hope that it would give us some priority or preference.
I will try again next year. The uncertainty makes it hard to plan though, given that I'm living in Ireland.
Freebies are nice and all but would happily forgo them or pay 3-4x the ticket price to be able to attend.
Re: Google I/O 2013 Registration Sells Out In 49 Minutes
#39I'm pretty sure this outcome is exactly what Google wants. Hardest tickets to get in town, even with a $900 price tag. Why else would they continue to give away such great swag at an event with such high demand? On the up side, streaming basically the entire event for free does calm the righteous indignation to a degree. Still, it would have been nice to get a chance to meet and chat with other people working on the…
This is the real question - what is it that Google wants out of I/O? Do they want developer engagement, or do they want to publicize their most recent toys? Either is certainly valid, but the current setup does not optimize for engaging developers.
But, you've got to hand it to them, they certainly do wring out all of the PR they can from I/O. I'm honestly not sure how I'd change it... expect maybe make the keynote a separate ticketed event. I'd love to go just for the developer talks, even if it meant skipping the swag-laden keynote.
Re: Google I/O 2013 Registration Sells Out In 49 Minutes
#40I haven't been to I/O, and have only seen a few of the talks online. Can someone explain what the biggest appeal for going to the conference is? Talks? Networking? Workshops?
Free gear. Last year was the Nexus Q, Nexus 7, and Galaxy Nexus. The talks are good too, but the appeal has definitely been the gear, which is unfortunate. Edit: to add, interacting with the devs is really nice. I went 2 years ago and was able to talk with the GWT team a bit after one of the talks. As well, if you want to network, there is definitely lots of opportunity for it, but it is not something I've cared abou…
Networking is the major reason I go.
Test devices are nice, but I can have my company buy me pretty much any test device I need.
Sessions are good too (but are also online)