Gmail goes down (again!) should we rely on it?
In what seems like millennia to internet users, GMail, the predominant email service for the squeaky wheels of the 'net, went down for a few hours earlier today and users took to their normal place of complaint, Twitter, with many cries of frustration. We'd simply point and laugh at the mob most of the time, but this isn't the first time we've seen a major blunder from Google. In fact, its the second time in a month that GMail has gone down, calling in to question whether businesses, who rely on bulletproof communication, should start reconsidering GMail, and move back to their own email servers.
To parse the problem, we talk to Natali Del Conte from CNET, and Mark Harris, who is a freelance writer for numerous tech publications. Natali brings up that 2009 in general seems like a year where we're seeing problems across Google, not simply with GMail. Mark attributes the problems to growing pains, with GMail being one of the most rapidly growing email services to date.
Should we take it easy on Google, or should they feel our collective internet wrath? Sound off in the comments, or leave a video reply on YouTube.
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Gmail outage plagues users
Gmail is currently suffering from some system woes, according to users on Twitter (and on my account too.) No word yet on what's causing the problem, but users report not having access to contacts, some can't send or receive mail, and some users can't even access their inboxes at all.
Three weeks ago, GMail users suffered a similar issue, and were equally vocal about the problem.
GMail goes down: Notable or not?
Yesterday, as we blogged about previously, GMail went down for about 100 minutes, putting the email inboxes of countless geeks in limbo. Users on Twitter took the bait, and as is usual, freaked out. Meanwhile, others played it cool on Facebook. Should we expect outages more frequently than they happen? How big of a problem is a lack of email? We talk to Andrew Nusca of ZDNET about the outage, and get his take on whether he's a pitchfork wielding member of the mob, or whether he's a calm and collected soul.
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Google explains 100 minute GMail outage
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Google says overloaded routers are to blame for the 100 minute outage that plagued GMail yesterday afternoon. The company says it was rolling out some routine changes, which caused router load to shift to other routers, which then tried to shift the traffic again, till eventually all of GMail's routes were blocked.
PayPal transactions halted for about an hour
If you were having issues completing your PayPal transaction around 1:30 p.m. EDT on Monday, you weren't alone. PayPal users were affected by a world-wide outage that lasted approximately an hour because of an "internal network hardware issue".
Internet outage hits Google, how to deal with the problem?
Waves of reality are rippling throughout the Internet. Whenever the monolithic Google is unavailable for a period of time, users feel like they're returned to a late 90's dark age where the rainbow logoed search giant hasn't yet achieved complete dominance... and they're not sure how to deal without the provided services. We talk to Josh Lowensohn of CNET, and Christina Warren of Download Squad about their Google-less backup plans. Josh points out the problem with this outage wasn't just the lack of access to Google, but any sites who had Google Analytics installed failed to properly load, causing a greater network effect of issues. Christina shared with us some of her backup plans for general outages, but also wondered if it wasn't smart for people with mission critical business operations to go it alone, or forge some sort of backup in case Google's big bad servers become unavailable.
Speaking of outages, one service notorious for downtime had some unplanned problems of its own yesterday. Twitter changed a setting which had users in an uproar, followed by some planned maintenance during the day, and then unplanned problems at night. We talk about the situation, and why despite the problems, Twitter seems to be doing just fine.
Are you a Twitter Qwitter? When will you give up on the service? Also, do you have backup plans in case of a Google outage? How do you deal with smaller outages, like local problems?
Google outage affects users worldwide
Google is evidentally having widespread problems today, to which I can personally attest. Users around the globe are finding Google sites extremely slow to load or completely unresponsive. The issue affects not just the search engine but other services as well, including YouTube, Google Docs, and Gmail.