I came home late after a night at the movies and read the news that Gmail had been down for a few hours.
I use Gmail as my main mail service through Google Applications and checked to see what the fuss was about. Everything was working for me. No problem. I must have missed the outage. This morning, my RSS reader was buzzing with reactions.
The official Gmail blog features an apology from Google. "We heard loud and clear today how much people care about their Gmail accounts", says the Gmail blog. Google says they're reviewing what happened and are moving quickly to fix it.
The Blog Herald features the story "Gmail Outage: Why it Still Says Beta". Thord Daniel Hedengren thinks that the "beta" label at the top of Gmail is "ridiculous" and "it works well enough to replace a desktop mail client".
I found out about the Gmail outage through my Twitter account. Google mentions the impact of Twitter in their official apology. CNET's Webware blog reports on the impact of Twitter in reporting the news. According to B.L.Ochman's Blog, Twitter users were spreading news of the outage before news sites could report it.
I use Gmail as my desktop email and to manage a the multiple email accounts and my dozens of web app accounts. I wasn't affected by the outage, but I was at the movies last night. Had I been in the middle of something crucial or had a deadline, I might not have been so forgiving.
My main concern about Gmail has always been security. They're still working on that.
