Gmail became temporarily paralyzed Monday, and with no access to e-mail for a few hours, some of its users felt that way as well. Judging from users posting in blogs and forums, reactions ranged from angry and emotional outbursts to patient tolerance for the four-years-and-still-in-beta Web e-mail service.
eMarketer Whitepaper: Optimizing the E-Commerce Experience
From the Web to the Contact Center, are you prepared to proactively engage and keep your savvy customers? Read how e-commerce leaders are optimizing their sites with ratings, reviews, live help, Web analytics, mobile and more.
Many Google Gmail users who tried to access their accounts Monday found the service dark. For a period of roughly two hours, users would log on to be greeted with an error message.
The outage was caused by a temporary glitch in Google's contacts system, which was preventing Gmail from loading properly, according to the company. Google did not return a call to TechNewsWorld in time for deadline.
Google, for its part, has been profuse with its apologies. "Many of you had trouble accessing Gmail for a couple of hours this afternoon, and we're really sorry," wrote Todd Jackson, Gmail product manager, in a blog posting. "We heard loud and clear today how much people care about their Gmail accounts."
A quick search through Twitter and Technorati can pull up much more explicit emotion about the crash -- as well as a counter-wave of opinion that people were making too much of the outage.
Greg Sterling, founder and principal analyst at Sterling Market, falls in the latter category, although he acknowledged the anxiety a businessperson experiences when fundamental service like e-mail 
is down without any notice of when it will go back up.
"It is unreasonable for people who rely on a Web-based system to expect it to be up 100 percent of the time," he told TechNewsWorld." Where Google might have erred, he said, was its lack of communication in how long the outage would last. "Conceivably, they could have posted updates on their blog and spread the word through common points of online dissemination like Twitter."
In the main, though, the furor over the outage is due more to the hyper scrutiny aimed at huge service providers, he said. "It is not just Google, but directed at other companies like Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) or Microsoft."
That same laser beam of scrutiny is also being directed at cloud computing in general right now -- and this outage could fuel perceptions that such services are unstable.
In actuality, though, the glitch had nothing to do with the delivery mechanism, Mike Eaton, CEO at Cloudworks, told TechNewsWorld.
"This is something that could happen with traditional e-mail service or through a Web-based system."
Print Version
E-Mail Article
Reprints
More by Erika Morphy
Next Article in Communication Systems
|
Unified Communications: Lifeblood of the Contact Center August 07, 2008 
Nearly one quarter of organizations polled in recent research have implemented unified communications in the contact center, writes Aberdeen's Steve Lawrence. Unified communications -- the convergence of technologies like instant messaging, e-mail, VoIP and e-commerce in or near real-time -- has moved beyond the headquarters. What's its impact in the contact center?
|
Related Stories
|
Google Toughens Gmail Security With Remote Logout July 08, 2008 
Gmail users who fear that they didn't logout from their accounts in various locations can now remotely sign out from the service. Google is rolling out the new privacy feature to Firefox and Internet Explorer users.
|
Gmail Opens Door to All Features Great and Lame June 06, 2008
Gmail engineers will be able to roll out new features and mods directly to users with Google's new Gmail Labs program. Any new feature that a Google engineer codes up -- large or small, cool or not-so-cool -- can be activated by users at their discretion without much, if any, in-house testing. Google invites feedback, and it readily admits that not everything out of Gmail Labs will be a stroke of genius.
|
Google Gives Gmail IMAP Support October 26, 2007 
Google has added IMAP support to its Gmail utility, allowing users to keep their information tightly synced while using multiple devices. IMAP connectivity is just one small piece of additional functionality in Gmail; however, as Google continues to enhance its free services, it increases its stickiness with users.
|
Related News Alerts
More by Erika Morphy
|
Ballmer Gives Shareholders - and Dell - Cause for Optimism November 20, 2009 
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was all smiles at the company's shareholders meeting, as he touted the early success of Windows 7. Ballmer's cheer may have been contagious; after posting a massive earnings decline for the third quarter, Dell needed some good news to latch onto, and the prospect of broad enterprise adoption of Windows 7 could spur PC sales.
|
AA.com Sucks the Fun Out of Trip-Planning November 20, 2009 
Using AA.com to book a flight was a painful experience. Densely packed, disorganized information was displayed in an unattractive format. On the plus side, it did seem as though the deals American Airlines advertised were real and not mere bait-and-switch lures. For anyone who wants a travel-planning Web site to inject a little pleasure into the experience, though, I say look elsewhere.
|
Salesforce.com Pumps Up Volume of Workplace Chatter November 19, 2009 
Salesforce.com has developed a collaboration platform that puts social networking to work. Salesforce Chatter facilitates employee collaboration on projects through Facebook-like profiles, status updates, feeds and groups. The question remains whether employees will be as open to social networking in the workplace as they are in their personal lives.
|
Get Business and Technology News Alerts
Most Popular | Spotlight Features | Exclusives
This Week on ECT News Network | Podcasts
WiFi Hotspot Locator 
Inside TechNewsWorld
|
Reader Services
|
Corporate
|
Headline Feeds
Talkback: 
