To Microsoft: We told you so

Yesterday the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) servers went down affecting users worldwide.

References

• Digg - Microsoft WGA server down! Results in un-genuine vista copies
• Microsoft Forums - Validation issues - Microsoft is having WGA server problems
• Engadget - Microsoft's WGA servers down, everyone's a pirate today
  
• Microsoft WGA blog - Validation Issue Fix
  

My Opinion

My opinion is pretty obvious and I stated it in length last year in Why my wife loves Windows XP Activation.

Actual Impact

The impact is both larger than stated, and less than it could be. Large businesses who use Windows are exempt from activation. They use volume key licenses, and for Vista they have internal activation servers. So they were spared. However this easily could have caused major problems for small and medium businesses. It was sheer luck that this happened on a weekend when most of these businesses were not working. Had this occurred on a week day, I expect the impact would have been quite massive.

Customer Response

Just read some of the comments on the blogs. Microsoft says "very few users were affected". How many is "very few"? Millions?

Rational Response

I want to repeat again that in my opinion WGA is a bad idea. However I think that the response to this recent incident should also be rational.

I have personally experienced WGA failures on XP. When XP fails WGA it prevents you from installing certain updates and other software. One such example is Internet Explorer 7. Internet Explorer 7 will not install without WGA. Otherwise XP keeps working without any features being disable. This means that if a WGA server temporarily fails XP users suffer an annoyance, but nothing worth really making a fuss over.

Vista users however have the right to mount a response. When Vista fails WGA, it actively disables features. In fact, major sites advised people not to reboot.

I have read a lot of comments. A few pro WGA (One wonders what is in their water), but overwhelmingly most are against WGA and really frustrated by this recent predictable episode. But some of these responses while justified are too strong. The best analysis I have read is ArsTechnica: Windows Genuine Advantage suffers worldwide outage, problems galore

What about next time?

What happens if this happens on a weekday? What happens if a Katrina type disaster hits Washington state? Does Microsoft have redundant or hot switch servers in Europe? What happens when some idiot with a backhoe cuts a fiber cable? This happens quite frequently and caused a major outage on the east coast of the US a few years ago.

WGA Blog

Microsoft has an WGA blog? Who knew? In fact who cares enough to read the WGA blog? Or should we consider this an "availabilty resource" before booting up Windows? I have added it to my RSS feeds as there are a few interesting items there, but unfortunately most if it seems to be marketing to try to justify WGA.

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