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I can't find any mention of this, but Stack Overflow is unusable if ajax.googleapis.com is not available. I know for many people Google's availability is not usually in question, but I noticed it when testing for a large corperate client of ours, who literally do block googleapis.com for their staff. It's also an issue in countries like Iran where Google is blocked, or on the off-chance that just googleapis.com goes down (not likely, but still possible).

The work around for this is very simple: Best way to use Google's hosted jQuery, but fall back to my hosted library on Google fail

Is there any reason this is not done on SO?

I just found someone did ask this last year, so this is a duplicate:

Employer blocks jQuery from Google, DOH!

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The behavior is the same as with JavaScript disabled -- you can still ask and answer questions with JavaScript disabled, which is the core function of the site. It is not "unusable", it is degraded.

And for those clients which block google.. well, they're breaking the internet for all their users, so I'd say they need to fix that bug first.

Bottom line: not our bug, broken policies = broken users.

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    Thanks for taking the time to answer my question. You're right, unusable is a too strong, and degraded is the right word. All the login boxes are gone, which is a bit confusing, to say the least, you can't vote, comment or accept answers, which are all fairly common. Anyhow, I was more interested why you didn't fallback to locally hosted copies, since I use this technique myself - is there a hidden cost to it or is it simply a time/value equation (very understandable)?
    – Colin Pickard
    Sep 14, 2010 at 20:18
  • they need to fix that bug first. Great point. Now we need to fix our party-government (or pay for VPNs) to continue enjoying SO. Perhaps I should try injecting jquery.js somewhere in a browser extension.
    – ZhangChn
    Jun 13, 2014 at 15:48
  • FYI, China has blocked almost every Google-owned IP address since late May 2014.
    – ZhangChn
    Jun 13, 2014 at 15:54
  • @ZhangChn actually points out a really good issue why is there no answer?
    – wannabeLearner
    Apr 28, 2017 at 9:13
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    From a privacy point of view, blocking Google is not a bug, it is self-defence.
    – fbmd
    Jan 2, 2018 at 18:51

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