Google Apologizes For Gmail Outage
Google attributed the problem to issues with loading contacts in the Webmail service and apologized in a post on the official Gmail Blog. "The issue was caused by a temporary outage in our contacts system that was preventing Gmail from loading properly," the Google team wrote.
The blog entry goes on to note that the Gmail team was paying attention to the uproar on Twitter, the e-mails sent to support and phone calls made from Google Apps customers and understands why users are angry, noting that the outage affected Google's employees as well.
"We heard loud and clear today how much people care about their Gmail accounts. We followed all the e-mails to our support team and user group, we fielded phone calls from Google Apps customers and friends, and we saw the many Twitter posts. (We also heard from plenty of Googlers, who use Gmail for company e-mail.) We never take for granted the commitment we've made to running an e-mail service that you can count on," according to the Gmail blog.
The problem has been corrected and users can access Gmail without problem. An interesting point to note on the outage is the fact that Google apologized for it. It wasn't until after 6 p..m PDT that Google's Gmail team updated the official blogand#8212;until then, the latest post was about customizing Web clips.
"Many of you had trouble accessing Gmail for a couple of hours this afternoon, and we're really sorry," wrote the Gmail team. "We don't usually post about problems like this on our blog, but we wanted to make an exception in this case since so many people were impacted."