Google solves long Gmail outage, but questions remain

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Google finally solved the latest Gmail outage on Friday night

By Juan Carlos Perez | Miami | Tuesday, 19 August, 2008

Late on Friday night Google solved the third Gmail outage of the past two weeks, but questions remain about the stability of the Webmail service, which is affecting the Google Apps hosted software suite.

Like the previous two outages, the latest one occurred as a login error that locked users out of their accounts. This time, some users were prevented from accessing their accounts for more than 24 hours.

All three outages affected not only individual Gmail users but also people who use it as part of the Google Apps suite of collaboration and communication applications.

Google acknowledged the Gmail problem on Friday and said it affected "a small subset" of the service's users. The company didn't immediately comment about what is causing the recurring login problem, nor did it provide a more specific figure for the amount of Gmail users affected.

The long outage was painful for several Google Apps users contacted via email.

Denmark's chapter of Fair Allocation of Infotech Resources (FAIR), an international nonprofit group, just started using Google Apps. When the outage hit, system developer Benjamin Bach was showing the suite to his colleagues, ahead of the planned launch of FAIR Denmark's website this week.

The outage lasted more than 24 hours. "Seeing such a long outage during the very first few days makes us wonder if a free solution provided by Google is actually 'pro' enough for us. We cannot correspond with schools in Africa or partners in Denmark and afford being out-of-mail for a whole day," Bach said.

FAIR, based in Norway, is devoted to supplying computer products to developing countries. The Denmark chapter is just getting off the ground and expects to grow its Apps user base from four people to up to 20.

Google Apps comes in versions, including Basic and Education, which are free, and Premier, which costs US$50 per user per year and includes additional functionality, a 99.9% uptime guarantee for Gmail, and phone technical support.

"I can give them a lot of credit for providing a free service, but they lose some of that when saying 'your email is totally inaccessible, and we're not going to tell you why or for how long.' It's arrogant. I'm a system administrator, so I deserve to know a little more," Bach said.

Indeed, Google seemed slow to address this latest outage. The first problem reports started appearing in the official Apps and Gmail discussion forums on Thursday afternoon US Eastern Time. However, Google didn't acknowledge the problem in the forums until almost 5pm on Friday, more than 24 hours after the first reports appeared. Google declared the problem solved shortly after 10pm on Friday.

Also out for more than 24 hours was Howard Feldstein, chairman of the Mexico chapter of Democrats Abroad, the official US Democratic Party organisation for American expatriates. "We're quite busy leading up to the convention. I have relied on Gmail not only for email but for my primary contact list and was totally isolated for more than a day," he said.

Abhishek Parolkar, an IT consultant in Bangalore, India, also lost access to his Google Apps Gmail account for more than 24 hours, which disrupted important billing messages from clients.

Sadie Upchurch, president of Glinting Communications, a public relations firm near Atlanta, was affected for about 15 hours. "I was on client deadlines and had to work around for re-routes and resends of emails from those clients," she said.

"I do remind myself that I'm not paying for the service and that there's a level of patience and adequate backup you've got to have when you're getting something for free," she added.

Still, it's common for organisations to try out Google Apps via its free Basic version before considering a move to the fee-based Premier edition, so a wobbly email component is unlikely to entice anyone to upgrade. Google serves all of its Gmail users, from individuals to Google Apps Premier account holders, from the same infrastructure, so Gmail outages hit all types of users indiscriminately.

The suite, even in its free version, is geared at workplace use and designed for employee collaboration, which is why it contains calendar, word-processing, spreadsheet, presentation and website creation applications.

For that reason, it's unlikely that Google would consider several lengthy Gmail outages in a span of two weeks as the norm for Apps. After all, Google has aspirations that Apps will grow its very small presence among large enterprises, which demand high performance and availability levels from their software. Apps is currently used mostly by small organisations.