Would Google or Facebook ever be at risk of suffering a DDoS attack?

Question

How strong is Google? I am curious, how much defense do they have?

Also, do ISPs give users tiny upload capacity because they worry about DDoSes?

Answer 1

Q1:

In truth, I highly doubt it. All servers are susceptible to a DDoS. The reason why it doesn't happen is because the amount of computers doing requests would probably have to be more than the server count that they have. Google has thousands of servers and receives enough requests a second to take out a number of smaller sites. In truth, it would take a large team (not 10-20, more like in the hundreds of thousands) working together running a simultaneousness attack. I'm sure right now, hundreds of people are running their own DDoS attacks to no avail. DDoS, keep in mind, isn't illegal*.

Q2:

This is possible, it is more likely the fact that they don't want to waste bandwidth. With hundreds of users signing up for (commonly free) accounts, they don't need people uploading gigabytes of data to later be request. Another reason is because they don't need gigabytes of "dead" data (data that is no longer being used) all over their servers.

*Based on the computer abuse act, unless you do damages amounting over $5,000 USD or DDoS a hospital/government agency it is legal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act#Criminal_offenses_under_the_Act