Comments on: This Week’s Gmail Outage: It’s Only Email, Get Over It

By: BC

BC — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 17:03:17 +0000

Misplaced confidence. Google Calendar has never come back, for instance. Items entered have been disappearing since at least October 2007 and Google has never fixed it in almost 2 years. Long time to wait.

By: SteveJ

SteveJ — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 22:34:32 +0000

I get ALL my important NEWS from Twitter. They are so far ahead of the “regular news” it is really sad. I demand immediate notification that important events such as Gmail Is DOWN. Immediate means NOW not 5 minutes from now on CNN or some other slow news source. This is 2009 – No More Delays. BTW, when Gmail is down it IS front page news around the World – learn to Deal with it.

By: the

the — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 20:16:43 +0000

The real big news concerning GMail is that it now requires (=collects) mobile phone numbers when you’re trying to register an account.

For spam protection purposes. Of course.

By: Pam T.

Pam T. — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 18:15:36 +0000

I thought the outcry was a little overboard. Twitter-ers were whining in the first five minutes. It was only out a couple of hours, not a couple of weeks.

And all I could think of was – you people have never worked for a large corporation (or the government) where outages are frequent.

Seems to me all the whiners need to find a life outside their email once in awhile.

By: Chris Davies

Chris Davies — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 13:53:52 +0000

I can see it from both sides. I think if you’re paying for enterprise-level services from Google then you’ve a right to complain; the sheer number of tech-familiar people who use both Gmail and Twitter means you’re always going to see an overwhelming number of comments on the latter should the former go down.

On the other side, as you say James, there’s always something else you can be getting on with. The biggest frustration is not knowing what’s going on, and not knowing how long fixing it is likely to take. If people could retweet the Gmail team saying “server needs to restart; back up in 15″ or “huge fire caused death & devastation; take a break because email is hours away” then at least users would know what to expect. Whether you’re paying for the service or getting it free (and let’s face it, the “free” people are paying Google via their adverts) there’s some reasonable expectation that they’ll do their best to communicate with you. If you’re shouting more to promote the service than you are to support existing users then I’m naturally suspicious.

By: zorkor

zorkor — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 04:34:31 +0000

I agree. Nothing in the world of IT stays online forever. But the worse thing is explaining it to the naive users who think that since you work in IT, you have some kind of Mario World mushroom which you can use and solve all of the IT problems. Hey give us a break, we are already cash starved and we cant change the whole server every time it goes down. Life working in Helpless Desk…tsk tsk..

By: Ben

Ben — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 02:41:42 +0000

gmail’s offline mode would work pretty well in this situation too.

By: AndyT

AndyT — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 22:09:17 +0000

I know of mainframes that have never been down for more than 20 years. Not once. They have email and database running on them. Most mainframes have been fault tolerant since the seventies. Today’s modern mainframes are literally Self-Healing. PC Servers are still know as “Piece of Crap” servers to big iron junkies like me.

By: tabletenvy

tabletenvy — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 20:27:36 +0000

It’s like the line from that Joni Mitchell song…

“Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you got
Till it’s gone…”

;)

By: Gary

Gary — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 20:02:24 +0000

Couldnt have said it better. If you even NOTICED the outage…you either:

A. have good timing, and probably should just go get a coffee or take a walk

B. Check email WAY too much.

Now if it was an internet outage…., now thats not funny! :)

By: noctilux

noctilux — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:54:44 +0000

Hi James,
I reacted exactly the same way as you did and also thought most people bogging down twitter were, well, being twits :-D
On the other hand, I suppose that outages like this one can be problematic, especially for big businesses – which google is busy trying to win over. Some people rely on responding very quickly to mails, and I can understand that they make a fuss.

By: Boca

Boca — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:37:58 +0000

Nice to hear a voice of reason.

Let’s face it, if your life or job is so utterly dependant on having continuous, uninterrupted email communication, you should either get antother job… or here’s a thought… a backup email account.

I have three… Work, Personal and a third for all my internet purchases etc. All three are from different providers and all three have gone down at least twice this year.

Such is the nature of the beast.

By: Robert

Robert — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:09:16 +0000

As far as I know, only the Web client went down. E-mail on my Palm Pre never missed a beat :) On my desk I use Thunderbird (with Google Apps) and didn’t have a bit of trouble. In fact, I don’t remember their IMAP going down in a long time. Whenever there’s a “Gmail outage” it’s always the Web client.

Corporate mail servers, no matter what size company, go down far more often than Google, in my experience. And you really don’t want to be a small to mid-size company going into a three day holiday weekend. If those three IT guys all go to a company party and get smashed on Saturday your e-mail could be down until Tuesday.

I for one am very happy that Google is watching out for my e-mail this weekend.

By: Tool

Tool — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:00:55 +0000

I believe this is applicable here. It is amazing how soon people are owed something. Especially something as fantastic and free as Google’s services. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXStPqhLmIk

By: James Kendrick

James Kendrick — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 18:59:11 +0000

I feel for you guys who have to support the backend. You are the true heroes of the corporate world. Butt-kissing mode off.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 18:54:52 +0000

As an IT guy who runs that stuff on the backend, AMEN!!!!