
Google, Gmail experiencing downtime worldwide - mgcreed
http://thenextweb.com/2009/09/01/google-experiencing-downtime-world/#
======
pluc
<http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en>

~~~
EGF
I actually like that they give a specific time to expect the next update down
to the minute

"We're aware of a problem with Google Mail affecting a majority of users. The
affected users are unable to access Google Mail. We will provide an update by
September 1, 2009 4:53:00 PM UTC-4 detailing when we expect to resolve the
problem. Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change."

This is one of those things that is extremely helpful for a sysadmin taking
heat from employees looking for answers.

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pbhj
US date order always makes me laugh - it's like people looked at date order
and thought if the day comes before the month that will be the European way,
lets flip it. Then they realised that would be YYYY-mm-dd and so be ISO
standard order, dang can't have that, hey lets have a mixture.

I know it didn't happen this way but some sort of logical order would be good.

~~~
compay
A logical justification could be found for any order. It's just arbitrary.

~~~
jmackinn
It would be good to hear a logical justification for the mm-dd-yyyy. I'm not
sure I can come up with one. It makes it hard to search and it doesn't follow
any sequential order. yyyy-mm-dd actually goes up by one each day. Try it next
time you have to number give files a date stamp and you'll find it makes your
life a lot simpler.

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mkinsella
Interestingly, GMail has failed twice in the last few weeks since they removed
it from beta. Before that, I can only remember one large-scale outage over the
previous few _years_.

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fishercs
Sometimes its pretty nice to be the end user of a big problem.

I feel sorry for those poor sysadmins

------
Mongoose
All those articles warning against having all your data in the cloud are
coming to mind. On the bright side, without email, there's temporarily one
less distraction to worry about. <http://www.paulgraham.com/distraction.html>

~~~
ars
But if you stored it locally you would still have downtime. Downtime
(problems) are inevitable. It's just that only you would notice, so it might
not get on the news.

I doubt the actual uptime would be that different for any one person.

~~~
modoc
The difference is that you can know what's wrong and fix it (assuming you're
able). Also, over the past 2+ years, my mail server has had less downtime than
GMail, and any outages were easy for me to diagnose and fix. I like feeling in
control over critical pieces of my business (at least as much as possible -
I'm in no position to build my own DC for instance).

~~~
natrius
Google is a better sysadmin than I am. I assume most people are in the same
boat.

~~~
lsc
I know google hires some people who are better than me, but that doesn't mean
the gmail system is better than something I could engineer.... For one thing,
google needs to have a much lower cost per user than I do, forcing them to
make some choices that I don't have to. I have no problem paying $50 a month
for email service, and that level of cost per user would be untenable on a
free email service. (I host most of my email myself, and I'm trading a free
co-lo to mark perkel of junkemailfilter.com to do my filtering. between that
and my time, I'd guess $50/month)

------
timcederman
Even Google's internal corporate mail is down. Yikes.

~~~
omouse
And Microsoft and Yahoo employees bust out the champagne :D

~~~
snprbob86
Dogfooding Exchange vNext is never fun...

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rudd
Huh. GMail is down for me, but GMail's IMAP is still working. I didn't even
notice.

~~~
lanaer
Yeah. I only ever use GMail through IMAP, and then didn’t find this until
after it was back up. Never had a clue.

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wwkeyboard
I wonder what the load on that little machine that's spitting out 502's is
right now...

~~~
donw
I'll give you a hint: It's in Los Angeles...

------
joshuaxls
Coincidentally, their "Go Google" billboard campaign just ended today.

------
mitchellh
No gmail at work = Its lunchtime for me. Hurray Google for naturally putting
me on break!

~~~
Mongoose
Ditto. Back to Dino Comics, TED talks, and SICP.

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madars
Workarounds: GMail gadget for iGoogle ; IMAP/POP3.

It's not all that bad :)

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datums
I haven't had an issue all day, till you guys mentioned it :) Down on the east
coast 4:02pm

You can login here.
[https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=mail...](https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=mail&passive=true&rm=false&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fmail.google.com%2Fmail%2F%3Fhl%3Den%26tab%3Dwm%26ui%3Dhtml%26zy%3Dl&bsv=zpwhtygjntrz&scc=1&ltmpl=default&ltmplcache=2&hl=en)

~~~
datums
nvm that only gets you the login screen

Server Error The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete
your request.

Please try again in 30 seconds.

------
l0nwlf
<http://www.google.com/ig> shows me signed-in in chat-mode. Can anyone explain
why so ?

~~~
ccarpenterg
GMail at iGoogle is working for me. Edit: It was working. Not anymore.

~~~
Leon
works for me

------
Leon
Strange, I just did a search for movie show times in my area earlier and just
now, and it seems that some cinemas are missing.

The timing lines up exactly with the gmail outage.

Since those theaters have always been listed in the movie showtime search as
long as I can remember, this could be part of a larger service outage. What
else is down that they aren't telling us?

------
garply
Wow, I've been lazy in migrating away from Gmail but this motivates me to do
so.

~~~
dhyasama
_Everything_ goes down sometimes. I've found Gmail to be more stable than
most.

~~~
icey
Yeah, at least when gmail goes down, everyone knows about it.

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noodle
i'd like to note that i can access gmail through the igoogle gmail widget, and
just got, read and responded to a fresh email through it.

can't access gmail through any other means.

thought it might be useful for everyone to know and give it a shot.

~~~
nollidge
Works via iGoogle for me as well, and I've received a couple e-mails from
GMail users from their iPhones. So presumably it's just the web front-end
that's busted.

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grandalf
Hah just checked HN while waiting for gmail to log me in...

------
sid
Australia down as well ... was just about to click on an exciting mail when ..
pop !! you are now accessing offline mail :(

 _waits while twiddles thumb_

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commiebob
"We will provide an update by September 1, 2009 5:16:00"

Hit refresh at 5:16 and it's back up. That was pretty impressive.

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barredo
IMAP and POP3 are working fine

~~~
gibsonf1
Dumb workaround: Forward mail from Iphone IMAP to yahoo account

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Derrek
Just tried. It's back up for me in Washington, DC, USA

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rg
Gmail 502 error from San Francisco 12:52 pm PDT.

~~~
rg
Same machine is up, 2:32pm PDT

------
jacktang
ping mail.xx.com PING ghs.l.google.com (72.14.203.121) 56(84) bytes of data.

Customize URL in Google App/email is broken :(

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cschep
Back up here in Portland, OR.

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simplegeek
Even down here in Pakistan ;(

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kansando
On the 28th day - we crash.

------
mishmax
Back up for me!

------
fjabre
Brazil is down

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onreact-com
\- Darling, do you remember the day when Google was down?

\- You mean the day 9 months before our son was born?

===

Enjoy it while it lasts.

------
l0nwlf
502 Server Error

[ $date -u => Tue Sep 1 19:59:05 UTC 2009 ]

#fail

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Readmore
And that is why Google Voice is not a replacement for cell phone service. Take
that Arrington!

~~~
harry
Actually, GV is working fine.

~~~
yan
I think the OP meant outages in general

~~~
Readmore
Exactly. With feigned 'outrage' at Arrington for all his Google Voice love as
of late.

~~~
viraptor
Are you suggesting that cell towers never fail?

~~~
sfphotoarts
they do fail, often, in fact, but the difference is that its a decentralized
system and several towers being down isn't a big deal, its just a normal day.
They contract with many carriers to carry data and often a single cell site is
multihosted so any one carrier switches to another provider, who now has them
over a barrel so charges them more. Cell tower failures affect the mobile
carriers profits, and not necessarily the users service.

