I'm not sure it's a really a small subset of users. My personal gmail is down as are all accounts in two different Google Apps organizations I belong to.
Mine is down also. This is actually slightly terrifying. What's standard operating procedure for recovering from a lost gmail account? And I don't mean getting the account back--I mean, your account is lost forever.
Your whole account or just the email part? If you have a real email client, you could rescue your email from it even if your account is toast. If just the webmail part goes down permanently, you can download your mailbox from https://www.google.com/settings/takeout
I still have my Gmail account hooked into Thunderbird. I don't actually use it to check my mail, but it keeps pulling it all down, so if Google's servers all catch fire, I lose nothing.
No Google status update as of the time of the orignal post, but a quick Twitter search suggests this is a widespread problem: https://twitter.com/search?q=gmail
It's not working for me either, and there are widespread reports on Twitter of the same experience. Funny thing is, the App Status Dashboard shows green for me.
I can load some music from my playlists, but in the same playlist I am seeing it retry a song several times and then skipping it, so I think it is reasonable to assume it is affecting some servers but not others.
We’re sorry, but your Gmail account is temporarily unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience and suggest trying again in a few minutes. You can view the Apps Status Dashboard for the current status of the service.
If the issue persists, please visit the Gmail Help Center »
I suppose that the logic is "hey, I wonder if it's just us... surely someone on HN will complain the instant that things go south, better check there first."
Whenever I'm looking for real time information, the first thing I do is type search.twitter.com into chrome, hit tab to autocomplete into a search command, and search some keywords. Highly recommended! Also works if you're curious if an earthquake just occurred in your general area.
I was happy with that. The first thing I did was try from a couple different proxies then try a different gmail account and I was in wtf mode. Google's status indicator was showing everything was fine. I then checked HN and it was at the top. Their status indicator reflected the state of affairs 15 mins later.
The cynic will say "karma whoring" but I think it's actually because it increases the likelihood that something will happen.
For example, when there were coinbase issues, people wouldn't get responses for weeks. However, once a post about the delays hit the front page, the founders finally responded.
So no, I'm not surprised this happened and I wouldn't be surprised to see a swift response
In the specific case of google, clearly no. But I've seen cases, such as with coinbase, where a post on the front page of HN really did lead to action.
I agree: I think the effect of HN commenting on its downtime is nonexistent for high-profile products from a giant company. Maybe if Slashdot picked up on downtime of a Google Labs product in 2004, you'd see an accelerated response, but that Google doesn't exist anymore.
The most I could see is some people from Google commenting here to give some slightly more technical than average canned response in order to flatter potential recruits. (And even that is so unlikely that I wouldn't assume any Google employees commenting here are doing that unless they gave the game away somehow.)
About me it indicates that I am totally dependent on Google for acquiring information about work-state and communication. I think that's OK, since I work here, but I'm not sure.
When I clicked the "status dashboard" button I saw a board of green dots. I didn't trust that so I came here because I figured it'd be the first place I could confirm that gmail was in fact down.
"What does it say about us that our first response is to rush over to HN?"
Would have to have some statistics to back up that "about us" though, right?
Although I have some gmail accounts for various purposes main mail is actually non gmail. I just happened to browse by and see the link. The question is why did I care to click through? I guess because I was curious what others would say about this or what they knew about it. Not that it mattered to me since as I said it's not my main email source. So what we have is really the same curiosity of when there is a car crash and you end up with a "gaper" delay.
475 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 312 ms ] threadWest Coast, US.
It is a firm reminder that Google is not bullet-proof.
For OS X users, CloudPull (payware) is a good solution for a continuous Gmail backup. It's developed by Golden Hill Software:
http://www.goldenhillsoftware.com/
If the issue persists, please visit the Gmail Help Center »
Technical Info
Numeric Code: 93
I suppose that the logic is "hey, I wonder if it's just us... surely someone on HN will complain the instant that things go south, better check there first."
Checking twitter never occurs to me...
Someone asked on IRC, I checked - it was down - then I was, It got to be on HN
For example, when there were coinbase issues, people wouldn't get responses for weeks. However, once a post about the delays hit the front page, the founders finally responded.
So no, I'm not surprised this happened and I wouldn't be surprised to see a swift response
My summary: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6932224
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6929705
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5427985
The most I could see is some people from Google commenting here to give some slightly more technical than average canned response in order to flatter potential recruits. (And even that is so unlikely that I wouldn't assume any Google employees commenting here are doing that unless they gave the game away somehow.)
Would have to have some statistics to back up that "about us" though, right?
Although I have some gmail accounts for various purposes main mail is actually non gmail. I just happened to browse by and see the link. The question is why did I care to click through? I guess because I was curious what others would say about this or what they knew about it. Not that it mattered to me since as I said it's not my main email source. So what we have is really the same curiosity of when there is a car crash and you end up with a "gaper" delay.
http://imgur.com/7dempIL