Down and Out With Gmail
By Harry McCracken | Tuesday, September 1, 2009 at 1:35 pm
[UPDATE AS OF 2:30PM TECHNOLOGIZER TIME: Gmail is back up, at least for me.]
Gmail is not feeling well today. I know because it’s the talk of Twitter. I know because an old Technologizer story happens to be Google’s first result for “gmail down.” Most of all, I know because both my primary work and personal e-mail accounts are on Gmail, and both are giving me an ugly Server Error right now.
I’m not sure how long this has been going on, but it continues as I write this, and it’s not a momentary blip–it’s an extended outage that appears to be affecting much if not all of Gmail’s users. I’m engaging in a little self-flagellation at the moment, since I’ve placed so much trust in Gmail (despite prior evidence it’s not perfect) that I don’t even use its IMAP capabilities to download mail via a traditional client. When Gmail’s not available, neither is my mail. (And important stuff it contains, such as the dial-in info for a conference call I’m supposed to be joining shortly.)
Sweeping Gmail blackouts remain relative rarities, but I’ve been increasingly frustrated with the service’s reliability recently. It often conks out on me temporarily, or behaves so slowly that it might as well be unavailable–and while the cause remains mysterious, I’ve experienced the same symptoms on multiple browsers on different PCs on a variety of networks.
Just this morning, I was soberly considering whether it was time to regretfully move on to something I might find less flaky. I’m still thinking that over, but today’s meltdown has convinced me that at the very least I need to be downloading my messages. I’m a mostly-happy Google freeloader, but the Gmail I’ve been using of late simply isn’t reliable enough to run a business on.
Which brings up today’s T-Poll:
Final note: Google has blogged about the downtime, and says that if you’ve already set up POP or IMAP access it should continue to work. It also says it’s looking into what’s going on and hopes to have more news soon. Once everything’s fixed, I hope very much that it errs on the side of telling us exactly what happened, even if it’s dry and technical…
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Shared Items: 1 September 2009 Says:
September 1st, 2009 at 5:31 pm[…] Problems. [Gmail Blog] Gmail went down today. Tough times indeed. Coverage: TechCrunch, CNET News, Technologizer, Data Center Knowledge. var addthis_pub = 'benjaminjtaylor'; var addthis_language = 'en';var […]
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The Night They Drove Old G-mail Down « Around The Sphere Says:
September 1st, 2009 at 6:17 pm[…] Harry McCracken at Technologizer: Sweeping Gmail blackouts remain relative rarities, but I’ve been increasingly frustrated with the service’s reliability recently. It often conks out on me temporarily, or behaves so slowly that it might as well be unavailable–and while the cause remains mysterious, I’ve experienced the same symptoms on multiple browsers on different PCs on a variety of networks. […]
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Yesterday’s Gmail Outage: Google Responds | Technologizer Says:
September 25th, 2009 at 4:37 pm[…] company’s philosophy about responding to technical issues and conceded that Gmail (which had another major outage on September 1st) has had a rocky […]
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Should We Call It the Bing Screen of Death? | Technologizer Says:
December 3rd, 2009 at 10:27 pm[…] period back in January when it thought the entire Web was dangerous, and Gmail has suffered multiple extended hiccups this year. I wonder what the biggest Web site is that’s never been suffered for more than, oh, five […]
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Reliability: Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be | Exectweets Says:
December 10th, 2009 at 10:24 pm[…] real world, a slightly higher profile example is the T-Mobile network outage in early November, or troubles with on-line email services–none of which are particularly […]
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The Dangers of the Cloud – Apple Siri Goes Offline | JASE Digital Media Says:
November 10th, 2011 at 8:03 am[…] of outages over the years, most recently in February 2011. In September 2009, they had two separate outages, following other service outages in February 2009 and August 2008. Some of these outages […]
September 1st, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Well, that’s cloud computing for you.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:48 pm
When using igoogle with the Gmail gadget I can still read my mail, archive and reply is. Only labels aren’t available.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Yeah, found you RIGHT off the bat number uno on google.
Wow that was a fast response from you… Evidently you’re really on top of your blog. Take a lesson, self.
Guess you’ll have backup emails – I’ve got accounts with a bunch of different domain names and several servers. But gmail’s mail of choice and I recommend it constantly to EVERYONE.
Will have to preface future references with “Be sure to backup onto your computer, and don’t be surprised if the Mighty Goog has Glitches. Comes with the territory of FREE…”
September 1st, 2009 at 1:51 pm
And totally agree with the cloud computing comment…
didn’t some rather huge social network plummet into non-existence because their RAID and Cloud crashed?
Forget the name…
Duddly dum. No email… what to do.. what to do… pester innocent blogs…
September 1st, 2009 at 1:52 pm
iGoogle does NOT work for me.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:52 pm
This also affects other 3rd party portals which use customized GMail for their customers. =(
September 1st, 2009 at 1:53 pm
maybe this is the moment to clean my room.
naaaa….
okay! i’m outahere : )
September 1st, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Ohhhhhhhhhhhh the pain! This is literally killing me, how am I supposed to know when my kidney transplant is ready?!
September 1st, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Google Mail appears to be working if you use some 3rd party client and connect using their pop3 accounts.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Google Offline (using gears) is easier than POP/IMAP for a local backup…
September 1st, 2009 at 1:55 pm
I do have other backup email addresses for this reason alone.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:59 pm
502 Server Error 🙁
September 1st, 2009 at 2:05 pm
You can still access gmail on a Blackberry
September 1st, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Could this be a hacker attack did someone try to bring it down I keep getting 502 error. I guess I’ll go back to my backup. The old trusty yahoo account.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:07 pm
stop pouting. GMail is free; and it has become a standard. If you are “running your business off it”; get outlook and download via IMAP. This isn’t hard, especially for someone who posts on a site with tech right in the name.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:14 pm
but you can’t on treo
September 1st, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Well, I would be willing to pay, but then if they accepted money, they would have to be accountable to customers.
I always download to T’bird, but I make a rule of checking on webmail first to get rid of any spam.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Damn gmail had to die now… Cant access the email which had address of my new office is… day 1 and thanks to Gmail, I will be late
September 1st, 2009 at 2:16 pm
IT’s WORKING! 5.16 pm I got my emails ok gotta go get em while I can! omg! omg!
September 1st, 2009 at 2:18 pm
confirmed it is back
September 1st, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Hi!
i’m wondering if it is possible to do a local backup using POP/IMAP and still keeping all the info available on gmail.com
any one has a clue?
September 1st, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Hurray!!!
September 1st, 2009 at 2:38 pm
I run two gmail POP accounts and one IMAP account via Mail.app and the iPhone. I cannot remember when I last had a problem and they are cheerfully downloading and uploading umpteen times a day. Webmail is for kids 😉 I manually check each time I read one of your gmail tweets. Never had a problem yet.
I’m going to regret writing this!
Jorge, I think you should do a little homework on POP/IMAP accounts and gmail options!
September 1st, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Huzzah, it’s back! Fortunately I was able to read my new emails on my iPhone while it was down, and access my old ones using Gears.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Those of us who use desktop email clients had no Gmail outage today. It’s a lot more efficient to work with Eudora or Thunderbird (or whatever) anyway.
September 1st, 2009 at 3:43 pm
Gmail down created a great trend on Twitter.. Even iGoogle was no working…Glad Its back now..Though I hope they will not come up with something like
After Twitter Google got DDOS attack
September 1st, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Harrison Ford was super pissed about Gmail being down
http://tinyurl.com/ntpjut
September 1st, 2009 at 7:50 pm
IS IT DOWN AGAIN? i cant get on
September 2nd, 2009 at 5:11 am
Gmail actually got down only in web services. In POP and IMAP Gmail service remains undisturbed. Even though the back up time is extended Gmail still provides a reliable service.
September 4th, 2009 at 8:22 am
I can’t believe people are complaining about a free service going down for an hour. You say it’s not reliable enough to run a business on? Then don’t ever try Comcast! It costs me $60 a month, and I’ve lost 12 days in the past two months. Now THAT’S too unreliable to run a business on.