"The service disruption lasted a few hours, which entitles Google Apps Premier customers to a three-day service credit," a company spokesperson told VentureBeat. "Given the extent of the outage and as a gesture of goodwill, we are going above the SLA [service level agreement] and extending the full credit, which is 15 days."

The $278 million Orbiting Carbon Observatory was designed to monitor how CO2 enters and exits the Earth's atmosphere -- hoping to yield a picture of a rhythm that is much like taking a breath. Forests and oceans absorb the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere, while burning fossil fuels and decaying plant and animal life send more back.

Google has taken to its official blog to further explain why those funny markings found off the coast of Africa are not the lost city of Atlantis. The company has enlisted two scientists, David Sandwell of Scripps Oceanography and Walter Smith of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who are responsible for the imagery in Google Ocean, to help explain away the Atlantis rumors.