[LINK] Google breaks

[Jan Whitaker]

[Some interesting questions here: what do you do when the 'cloud' 
service breaks? What do you do as a business when you outsource your 
communications platform to a 3rd party like this and they then say, pay up?]


Gmail goes dark for users worldwide

Published: December 11, 2012 - 9:08AM

Several Google web products, including the popular Gmail service, 
went down for users in Australia and around the world overnight.

Google confirmed that "service disruptions" had affected Gmail and 
Google Drive, its online storage service. The two products are part 
of Google's Apps suite, a Microsoft Office rival that caters to both 
consumers and businesses.

By 5.10am (EDST) on Tuesday, Google's Apps Dashboard monitoring 
service reported that Gmail and Drive service had resumed, after 
having been down for about an hour.

"The problem with Google Mail should be resolved," it said. "Although 
our engineering team is still fully engaged on investigation, we are 
confident we have established the root cause of the event and corrected it."

The company did not specify how many users were affected, or where, 
but the outage prompted widespread complaints on social media in 
Australia, the US, Britain and Brazil.

"1st time experiencing Gmail/Calendar/Drive Outage in 6 years! .. 
that felt awesome," tweeted @poytb in Sydney.

Some users also reported that the outage had affected Google Docs, 
the company's word-processing and spreadsheet programs, while Chrome, 
Google's internet browser, also crashed unexpectedly.

"We are currently experiencing an issue with some Google services," 
Google spokeswoman Andrea Freund said in a statement. "For everyone 
who is affected, we apologise for any inconvenience you may be experiencing."

Firmly entrenched in the consumer market, Gmail is one of Google's 
most popular and important product offerings. The search giant, which 
has been pushing a corporate version of the email service and its 
Apps suite to businesses to compete with Microsoft, said this month 
that the package will no longer be free to business customers.

Reuters, Fairfax Media

This story was found at: 
http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/gmail-goes-dark-for-users-worldwide-20121211-2b6gn.html 




Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com

Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer

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