Now that I think of it, I might have blamed my provider or at least restarted my modem if Hacker News was ever down...

I don't think it's that so much as the fact that that half of the internet services that rely on Google along the line somewhere (but not visibly to the users) are down, at least for me. And yet the Google search page can be reached (again, speaking from my European perspective, sample size one). To make it even more confusing: these issues are limited to my WiFi. If I use my phone connection as a hotspot the problems disappear.

So from the perspective of a regular person it is very reasonable to conclude that it is their internet provider that is down.

People and software, when Facebook was done my mobile thought the internet was unavailable.