It's only a partial outage (Google says 2% of users - much lower than I suspected).
Mine's been down for about half an hour (I'm in the UK). Someone did an Ask HN where it was mentioned that #gmail was trending on twitter which suggests that the problem is widespread. Edit: it is trending on twitter in the US at least. I didn't bother checking other locations.
I suppose one doesn't need to make the obvious observation that Google are of aware of the problem:
My personal gmail service is down too; however, my Google Apps gmail is fine. Not too concerned though. Gmail has been very solid for me throughout the years.
Is this a sign of an exceptional service that a minor outage ( I haven't seen it in my personal account or two apps accounts ) causes so much talk about it?
It's a sign that despite all the focus on new gadgets and forms of interaction, the really important stuff are the service that were figured out decades ago. People aren't talking about it because of what a great service gmail is, people are talking about it because ZOMG EMAIL IS DOWN!!!
You can go days without tweets. You can turn off your IRC window or Google+ hangout. You can lose your phone and recover, most of us have. But for a tech person losing email is being cut off from the world.
It seems like a good time to reflect on the concept of The Cloud. I run my mail off a 400MHz Pentium 3 in my closet, which would scale up to (probably) a few hundred users, enough for the companies of most of the people having problems here.
This issue isn't really that the service is down. From the perspective of the "help desk", the issue at the moment seems to be that the help desk is now "helpless desk", which an awkward situation to be in. Earlier, I e-mailed my University help desk since at the time the Google Status page had not been updated. Now it has, so I know it isn't just me.
But unfortunately (though not unexpectedly), the help desk is just as much in the dark as I am. They can't tell me: who it affects, how widespread it is, when it will be fixed, or even what the issue is. I wonder if "large" companies or organizations that use Google Apps get better support or have priority support in some way to get such information.
Although, my account seems to be working again, so that's good to know.
You would be more in control of your holiday airliner trip if you were allowed to fly the plane instead of the qualified pilot, that might not be a good thing though.
Visibility of the issue is dependent on knowing what the problem is. When outages are only an hour to two long, would you rather the technician spend the time communicating the issue or fixing it? This problem exists whether your technician is working locally or as part of a cloud service.
And when that P3 finally kicks the bucket? Or a power outage/earthquake/insert problem of your choice happens? I'm happy knowing that if my gmail is down, there is an entire team of people working to fix it - with no effort on my part at all. Just keep a backup of your mail and this whole cloud thing ain't so bad (hopefully your mail is backed up anyway cloud or no).
Sounds good. Wanna host my email accounts? I need a slick web interface, first-class spam protection, smart filters, instant search and data protection. For free, of course.
Likely to be one of the least interesting comment threads ever on HN.
It would be nice if people who posted these 'x is down' threads turned them into polls so that the extent (or not) of a problem could be seen. Even better if the poll had some large geographical options.
70 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 164 ms ] threadMine's been down for about half an hour (I'm in the UK). Someone did an Ask HN where it was mentioned that #gmail was trending on twitter which suggests that the problem is widespread. Edit: it is trending on twitter in the US at least. I didn't bother checking other locations.
I suppose one doesn't need to make the obvious observation that Google are of aware of the problem:
http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=issue&ts=13...
Edit2: It's back up for me. Now we wait to see what caused it, which is where the interesting technical information will emerge.
Even though they say <2% here: http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=issue&ts=13...
Note that docs are still working.
Sporadic is definitely the name of the game here.
You can go days without tweets. You can turn off your IRC window or Google+ hangout. You can lose your phone and recover, most of us have. But for a tech person losing email is being cut off from the world.
Some Universities have also posted the issue to their pages: https://sysnews.ncsu.edu/
There's certainly an opportunity of a side discussion on the use of cloud computing for services.
But unfortunately (though not unexpectedly), the help desk is just as much in the dark as I am. They can't tell me: who it affects, how widespread it is, when it will be fixed, or even what the issue is. I wonder if "large" companies or organizations that use Google Apps get better support or have priority support in some way to get such information.
Although, my account seems to be working again, so that's good to know.
Visibility of the issue is dependent on knowing what the problem is. When outages are only an hour to two long, would you rather the technician spend the time communicating the issue or fixing it? This problem exists whether your technician is working locally or as part of a cloud service.
It would be nice if people who posted these 'x is down' threads turned them into polls so that the extent (or not) of a problem could be seen. Even better if the poll had some large geographical options.
http://www.polljunkie.com/XAq3zW/Poll16008.aspx
We’re sorry, but your Gmail account is temporarily unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience and suggest trying again in a few minutes.
If the issue persists, please visit the Gmail Help Center »
Try Again Sign Out
Show Detailed Technical Info
but Google Apps is working fine