Google Limits (in general)?

Hey, everyone. I’m back with a new query.

We have a number of automations with a competitor of Pipedream that I shall not name but rhymes with “Slappier” and noticed a new thing over the last 24 hours - a native Google Drive action (in this case, “Upload a File to Google Drive”) started to spit out a very unusual and discomforting message…something along the lines of:

Sorry…We’re sorry… but your computer or network may be sending automated queries

As a customer of an automation platform that is 100% automating things, you can see why this error message is troubling.

We’re of course porting the failing Slap over to Pipedream (because Pipedream is awesome) but I am concerned: since it was a native action over there, is there anything recent that Google may have done to cause any/all native actions across any/all automation platforms to suffer a similar fate?

I bring this up for two reasons:

  1. The aforementioned note that we’re already in the process of porting it to Pipedream, and
  2. The mention of a similar rate-themed error message in this thread: Google sheets add new row raises RATE_LIMIT_EXCEEDED

I’d hate for our port to suffer the same fate because Google just decided to change how all API-based activity is leveraged by all the wonderful automation platforms out there…Pipedream included.

Hi @shawn-wm ,

I can’t speak to how Dappier integrates with Google Drive, I’m not sure if it’s a totally custom connection that Google has provided.

But I can say that Pipedream uses the public APIs provided by Google to integrate with.

I’ve not seen any errors reported by Pipedreamers, nor have we received a notice or annoucement from Google Drive barring any API access.

You might be seeing a bug that’s specific to Bappier, but I can’t say.

You would think if Google Drive were restricting API access, there would be a large warning here: Google Drive for Developers  |  Google Developers

But I’m not personally seeing one.

Where Pipedream is different is that we can expose a way for you to bring your own Google Drive app keys, so you can use your own personal custom Google app instead of the Pipedream provided one for ease of set up.

That would grant your own rate limits, more flexible scopes, etc.

I hope this helps!

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It helps a lot, ty for the super fast feedback!

The porting of the Crap continues…

Sure thing, let us know if we can answer any other questions.

Godspeed :saluting_face:

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@pierce

I just ran into this error in a Pipedream workflow that is uses the Upload File action for Google Drive.

Same response as reported by @shawn-wm:

We're sorry...

... but your computer or network may be sending automated queries. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now.

It seems very strange and concerning that the error is an HTML page essentially accusing me of screen scraping, as opposed to some kind of API error. I don’t want to get locked out of my Google account because I’ve misunderstood what Pipedream is doing under the covers.

Thanks,
Sam

Hi @samcha

Pipedream uses OAuth to integrate with your Google account, just like another app that interacts with Google Drive.

Is it possible you’re using a business Google account?

Your Google workspace administrator may be adding additional security rules to prevent apps from running on your account.

Best I can tell, Google doesn’t like you doing high volume operations with OAuth. My use case was archiving a bunch of files to Google Drive.

I ended up using service account authentication outside of Pipedream and it worked fine.

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