By Connor Hurson, Carousel30

Imagine it’s raining. Eh, just crummy weather–it happens. Now imagine it’s raining EVERYWHERE. Unthinkable, right? That’s how Jon Steinberg, CEO of North America at Daily Mail, described thed DoubleClick outage that affected millions earlier this week. DoubleClick, the platform owned and operated by Google that serves ads on publisher’s websites, went down on Wednesday from about 7am to 9am causing a chaotic, and costly, few hours for publishing companies. Without Double click up and running as usual, many users were seeing white space in areas where there would normally be ads–something that would likely be welcomed by most users in any other circumstance, but might have been confusing for many considering the unannounced, abrupt disruption. The outage, only lasting a little over an hour, gave publishers a glimpse into just how powerful Google is, and how with the click of a mouse, their primary revenue stream could come to a screeching halt. To read more about the outage, it’s effects and the indirect benefits head over to AdAge.

It’s too often that the news captures and informs on the world’s tragic events or unpleasant news. So this week, we thought we’d include a feel good story that’s still applicable to our industry–enter Google Bus. Google is launching an initiative in the country of Bangladesh in southeast Asia to help educate, inform and connect the young people of one of the fastest growing countries in the world. Bangladesh has the 8th largest population, and while much of their economy is dependent on manufacturing and exports, the young-adult population has shown both immense interest and growth in technology. Over the course of the next 12 months, Google Bus will visit 500 campuses in 35 locations and speak to an estimated 500,000 young people in an effort to give them the tools, resources and education they need to make the most out of the internet and other technology. While it’s obvious that the more people online likely means more money and visibility for Google, I think the tech giant deserves an honest pat-on-the-back for getting out there and trying to make a legitimate difference in the world. To read more on Google’s initiative, check out Tech Crunch’s coverage of the announcement.

Mobile-first. This is a mentality that many people have come to adopt over recent years that summarizes the effort to build mobile-friendly sites in all projects–not just those that request or require it. While most people are now convinced that this has become best-practice, it’s never really been enforced in a way that would truly encourage people–designers, developers, marketers–to actually abide by this mentality. Until now. In a recent announcement, Google said that they fully intend to have mobile-friendly sites stand out in search results over non mobile friendly sites. While Google can’t affect if a site is mobile friendly or not, there have been discussion of how to show mobile-friendly vs. non mobile-friendly sites in search results–the most realistic of which includes an icon to be displayed next to the search result. While this change to Google’s search rankings algorithm will undoubtedly take time, it’s likely that in the future mobile-first will transition from ‘mentality’ to ‘necessity.’ To read more on this, check out Mashable.

52.4%. That’s the percent of the US population that BrightRoll reached in September on a desktop computer. The population–not just active users. Why is that relevant? Well, BrightRoll happens to have just been bought by Yahoo for $640 million this past week making Yahoo the new leader in Video ad servicing in terms of reach. The deal, which is expected to close in the first quarter of 2015, is the second major acquisition under Yahoo CEO, Marissa Mayer, who bought Tumblr for a cool $1.1 billion back in May 2013. The decision comes after 2 years of a consistent decline in ad sales on Yahoo owned sites as buyers steer away from Yahoo’s “premium” ads and more into the programmatic video ads arena. Yahoo hopes to not only continue the expected growth of BrightRoll, but also exceed it’s previous projects in the coming years. To read more on the acquisition, check out the coverage at USA Today.

Alright..let’s see here. Black-Friday, Cyber-Monday, Giving-Tuesday, Leftovers-Wednesday….alright, maybe I made that last one up. But why can’t I make up holidays? That’s what Verizon Wireless just did. Verizon, the largest wireless service provider in the US, has declared the day before Thanksgiving, “Connection Day.” What does “Connection Day” involve? Well, aside from being the busiest travel day of the year, “Connection Day” will come with a number of free gifts–to be handed out to both Verizon customers as well as non-customers. Perks include things like free access to magazines, movies, TV shows, free data and a number of other things. The catch? You have to sign up for the rewards on their Connection Day website, which depending on your desire for prizes may not be a very big deal. To read more on the new “holiday” and see all the prizes being offered, roll over to The Washington Post.

This post first appeared on the Carousel30 website.