Update: As of 3:45 PM PST it looks like Gmail is back up, at least for some users.
Update 2: Google’s comment on the outage:
Since about 2 p.m. Pacific Time today, many Gmail users have been unable to access their email. We are very sorry for this interruption in service. The issue is being caused by a temporary outage in the contacts system used by Gmail which is preventing Gmail from loading properly. We are starting to roll out a fix now and hope to have the problem resolved as quickly as possible. Even though you may not be able to get to your inbox right now, your mail is safe, including new incoming messages.
We will post an update in the Gmail Help Center (http://mail.google.com/support/ ) when more information is available.
Update 3: Google issues a straightforward apology.
Gmail is having a systemwide outage affecting multiple countries, and a whole bunch of its 100 million users are screaming about it on Twitter. Around 20 million people visit Gmail each day, according to Comscore, and they’re all seeing the same message. The first outages were reported at about 2 pm PST, 44 minutes ago. The Gmail blog is silent on the outage, instead giving readers some useful tips on customizing web clips.
We’re waiting on Google for a comment on the reason for the outage, but I can’t help but suspect that my decision yesterday to abandon MobileMe/.Mac in favor of the super-stable Google apps may have been a factor. Sometimes Google does things just to spite me.
Meanwhile, the productivity of 20 million people worldwide just spiked upward. Thanks to Todd Garland for the creative image.
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Thanks Nick for the image
http://runningwithfoxes.com/20.....ail-whale/
I illustrated this guy for a friend who suggested Gmail needed it’s own fail mascot: http://chrisricca.com/failfrog
Nice reference, Chris
I’ve been down for about 20 mins.
lol, i just tweeted you lik 5 mins ago mike, to tell you about this. Total malarkey!
Gfail whale? lol.
Facebook is also down “Your account is temporarily unavailable due to site maintenance. It should be available again within a few hours. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
Everything was going berserk on the site before the message popped up, layout was messed up and the wall posts were down
Facebook is fine for me
Same here nick. Facebook is fine for me too!
Looks like it’s raining in the cloud.
but usually the scattered showers are confined to Twitter and MobileMe.
But we can’t blame them because they are still in Beta… what!? check out that link to the top-10 Google disappointments.
*cough* Sure, you all may not like Microsoft. But Hotmail is still working. *cough*
I’m sure all 5 hotmail users are very happy about that
I’m a Gmail user and I’m pretty annoyed. Your sarcastic comment is comical but misses the point that Hotmail still dominates Gmail in terms of users.
Google for corporations is down too.
lol!
Chill out, John. It’s unlikely that Hotmail “dominates” Gmail in terms of active users or growth.
Seriously, who uses Hotmail these days?
Gmail is weak and is (yes) totally dominated by both hotmail and yahoo - take your pick. And for good reason.
Hotmail has 2x as many user dumbass
I am one of those 5 hotmail loyalists!!! Of course I also have a gmail account… *bows his head in shame*
Mobile version is online
Phew
Not sure how you are getting responses - my mobile interface showed the list of messages and then promptly gave me the Fail Whale message.
This has been happening more frequently in the past 2 months. This outage has to be the largest one, though.
Let’s just hope it isn’t a result of DNS cache poisoning, in which case someone is collecting millions of GMAIL username/passwords.
That’s why you always use HTTPS. Then it would take a trusted certificate pair from a valid authority in the name of Google to effectively steal passwords. I’m pretty sure Google’s login process doesn’t let you log in over vanilla HTTP anyway.
If you want to always use HTTPS for all traffic in Gmail use this setting: http://mail.google.com/support.....swer=74765
I was just in the middle of using GMail when it went to the 502 page, ugh - way to ruin my day Google.
Very sad panda right now
all good here in germany. no problems, no outtage. panic ?!?
it’s been about 45 minutes I am going to loose it Paul Rivera where are you??? http://www.juliaefrench.com/?p=1
As much as I’d like to help, I’m down too! Who are we gonna escalate this to now?
I’m one of this 20 million. ………regretting very much that i didn’t redirect it to another mail account
@loopj it’s not microsoft that’s the problem, it’s hotmail’s gaping security holes that are the worry. i’ll take a broken gmail with its great security over hotmail working anyday.
Where’s your proof that Hotmail is a security risk? Your Gmail account deserves to be deleted to change that ridiculous way of thinking.
At least Hotmail isn’t in Beta 24/7 to avoid accountability for outages like this.
Haha…yeah, Hotmail is the clear choice for professionals everywhere, both for its security and its accountability.
Really?
This is also affecting their Business services email… i.e. Gmail white label for your own domain.
Using the free service, wondering if it’s also affecting paid biz accounts?
Hey Mike - yup, definitely affecting paid accounts, too. Ours has been down for the past half hour.
Frustrating!
Working Hotmail is the same as offline GMail — utterly useless. Over/under on how long GMail is out? I say under 30 minutes.
MobileMe is having issues too.
Apple bugs? That’s not news.
Tried logging into my Gmail account and I got that message. Then I checked TC and found out why. Hopefully, this gets online ASAP.
glad to know I’m not alone.
Mass panic here in Brazil, where it’s been down for ages now!!!
This is one way to shut down some people completely. It goes to show that we need more ways to backup our email contacts and content. You just never know.
Reporting live from India. Gmail out for 20 minutes. Not surprised to see this being reported on TechCrunch (that’s why I came here to see if I was the only one with the outage).
Mike, I think North Korea is preparing the attack and blocking off communications!!!!
And the world stopped…
I should probably just leave work now then… :p
I’m sad as Google Apps Premium accounts are also down. Hope they are going to offer free days.
I also pay for an 11-user Google Apps account. I believe there is an uptime guarantee for paid users (99.99%), so we should certainly get some kind of credit.
Actually, there are 525,600 minutes in a year, so .01% downtime translates to 52.56 minutes per year, so hang in there
@Ryan: Only one level of reply allowed, so I’ll reply to my own comment… I think downtime is typically calculated monthly, but I checked the Google SLA and it’s 99.9%, not 99.99%.
In a given month that would allow for 45 minutes of unscheduled downtime. I had well over an hour today, which according to the SLA means they’ll extend our paid service by three days.
This thing is killing me!
We have our business email hosted there , and most of our communication is done by email.
Have you heard any thing from them yet?
I have to Gmail accounts and I able to access one of them while the other is down. So I assume it is not a system wide outage
Boo hoo. Get a real email service that isn’t in endless Beta and then you’ll be justified in b*tchin’…
You can test with the macro on this page: http://wiki.imacros.net/Secure_Gmail_Login
At the moment, no access with the test account and my real account.
works in uk :S
My solution: messages forwarded to yahoo.com. It’s not down yet, but nothing can stop North Korea at this point.
You can get Gmail working if you use the HTML version see >> http://friendfeed.com/e/5ebe85.....852f1ac21/
trying again…. in 5:41 minutes
it is not an exponential backoff algorithm.. does anybody know?
Perhaps Google has decided to prematurely deploy their KeyCzar code without adequate testing.
Google Talk is down as well.
weird thing is that Twitter is still up and holding strong but google is down… weeeeeiiiiiirrrd… :/
it’s beta. no wonder…
USE THE BASIC VERSION https://mail.google.com/mail/h/
A rumor I heard at one time was that the infrastructure for gmail was not designed for the search capabilities that are the basis of google - rather, it was built on a virtual server (one instance of a machine per account) instead of a distributed infrastructure as the google Search Engine is.
Wonder if that has anything to do with it. Could the system have crapped out finally?
I got mine to work by switching back to the old UI with https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html .
That did the trick. Thanks!
THANKS!!
That only seems to work for reading email existing email. No new mail is coming in, and you can’t send any email, so it seems kind of pointless to me.
Wonder how it will affect the stock ticker: GOOG tomorrow.
It seems after all, that Google is not invincible.
I also wonder if the russians are behind this. Maybe they went too far with their attacks on Georgian networks.
About 18 hours ago, I saw a Tweet (http://twitter.com/TechCrunch/statuses/883803025) saying you were going with all Google products. Time to ditch Google products, too.
Software as a service, people. Software as a service. Why give downtime to just one organization when you can give it to millions? That’s modern efficiency.
I’d be surprised if Gmail going down didn’t cause a Twitter outage…
“Oops… the system was unable to perform your operation (error code 796). Please try again in a few seconds.”
http://twitter.com/Ekushey/statuses/884555531
Dude, is this a page out of War Games?
“Would you like to play a game?”
“How about Global Thermal Nuclear Take Down The Whole Freaking Intarwebs?”
mine is up again after 40min
the old html email works
https://mail.google.com/mail/h/
You are an oasis in the desert.