Outage Knocks Gmail Offline For Many Users 209
Many readers noted an outage affecting Google's gmail service last night. Firmafest points to a statement from Google, according to which only a small subset of users were affected. According to reader CaptHarlock, mail itself remained accessible through IMAP clients, and the chat feature via external applications. jw3 asks "Of course, gmail is just one of the many providers of web-based e-mails. When I look around, almost everyone seems to be using them nowadays. So — what do you do? Do you trust that the site of your web-based e-mail provider will never go down? Do you make backups of all your e-mails?" (Some readers still seem to be unable to reach the site, too.)
Never go down? (Score:5, Insightful)
100% uptime is possible, sure, but you're going to have to pay for it. It'll be horrifically expensive (thousands of dollars a month) because you'll need multiple levels of redunancy across your MTA server(s), web server(s), and connectivity, in two or three locations.
So, because that's a ridiculous expense for practically everyone, you should just chill out. A morning without your email isn't going to kill you. In fact, it might even be good for you. Take some time out. Go for a walk. Spend a few hours with your wife/kids/friends/dog.
People are talking about this outage like it was the end of the world. It made the BBC news! I swear the entire world has lost all sense of perspective (except me, natch).
(I was tempted to make a joke about email services being like girlfriends and how you don't need one that never goes down, but I thought that might be tacky. :) )
Re:Never go down? (Score:2, Insightful)
You're oversimplifying things. Many people rely on Gmail to be their primary source of e-mail for their business. People host their domains on it for their companies. For some people a few hours means money lost. Sure, it's their own fault for relying on "the cloud," but when you get used to a level of service and it suddenly cuts out it can be a major impact.
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the BBC (and many others) have thousands of employees, and millions of dollars, and can potentially publish hundreds of stories/articles a second.
Slashdot, has like 35 employees, and fuck all for money in comparison, and the stories are published in sequence/intervals, rather than as they happen, or even as soon as possible.
It's been said before, but this is by no means the latest, freshest, most up to date news on the web, frankly I'm surprised it got here as quick as it did (although a few people mentioned it in off-topic comments hours ago)
Good uptime, no data loss. (Score:4, Insightful)
"Do you trust that the site of your web-based e-mail provider will never go down?"
No, you trust that it'll never go down *for long*, and that when it comes back, your data will still be there.
Over the years, GMail has had way better uptime than anything I could have constructed myself, and the cost to me has been negligible.
Re:Never go down? (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>Many people rely on Gmail to be their primary source of e-mail for their business.
Yes, and many people rely on local mail exchanges, which in my experience fail at least once a week. ("Sorry cannot send email at this time. Server connection lost.") If Gmail only fails once every five years, it's still a better choice in my opinion than the current locally-provided email service.
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ma.gnolia! (Score:3, Insightful)
A) You're unfunny.
B) Stop spamming.
Re:Thunderbird Public Service Announcement (Score:3, Insightful)
Thunderbird is an exceptional mail client that does a great job of handling multiple addresses, but the only thing Windows Live Mail does better is that it allows mail to be indexed and searched from the Vista start button.
Why not? If it's because no one has implemented this in Thunderbird yet, fair enough. If it's because the APIs aren't available, then this is precisely the kind of thing the EU told Microsoft they weren't allowed to do.
Re:Thunderbird Public Service Announcement (Score:5, Insightful)
Use Thunderbird [mozilla.com] with GMail [mozillazine.org] and configure it so that every time there's a new message it is synced to your local hard drive but also left on the server (IMAP probably though I think the same can be done with POP).
Stole my thunder you did. Great minds do think alike.I have a similar arrangement, and I use the POP/SMTP settings rather than IMAP. Gmail is my email aggregator, mostly because it's so damn convenient.
I've never lost sight of the fact that it's a free service, and I can't depend on it for mission critical needs. But as free services go, it's definitely the best out there.
When cleaning is needed, I just clear out the Gmail inbox in one swoop, knowing that my HD has everything on it. I occasionally use Gmail as an offsite backup for files, or as a way to transfer files between machines. In many wasy, Gmail is something of a Swiss army knife.
Re:Thunderbird Public Service Announcement (Score:5, Insightful)
Put whatever you want after the + sign. It will still route directly to your inbox. Then, just setup a filter to put anything with "+spam" to the spam folder or the trash or wherever.
Yes, that's why when I see an x+y@gmail.com address in my zombie net I just strip off the +y.
It's a beautiful thing.
If by beautiful you mean trivial for spammers or anyone else who knows the first thing about google to get around, then yes.