I tried to log on to Gmail this morning and this is all I’ve been getting for the last hour or so. Anyone else seeing this?
Judging from the response on Twitter and a general search, it appears there are indeed some problems with Gmail throwing server errors (503 and 500) left and right, but it doesn’t seem to be as widespread as the February outage was (yet). But at least I’m not the only one noticing and the Google Apps Status dashboard also acknowledges the Google Mail service has been spotty for a while now.
Either way, if you rely on Gmail for work as much as I do, this is very annoying. I realize it’s a free service and all, but it’s troubling nonetheless. Gmail is one service that’s growing quickly but it’s very un-Google to run into scalability issues so I suspect it’s something else.
Hopefully they’ll acknowledge the problem on the support pages soon – which isn’t the case yet – and the undoubtedly ’small subset of users’ gets access again soon enough.
Update: it’s up for me after about two hours of downtime, but several users are still complaining about being blocked out.
Update 2: and it’s down again, both on desktop and from the iPhone.
Update 3: after nearly 8 hours of downtime for my account, Google acknowledges the problems.
“Google Mail service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users in the near future. Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change.”
So the ‘near future’ time frame is a guess and it might actually become the distant future?
I’ve had this happen several times before, though not right this moment. It was definitely frustrating and I remember freaking out after I had that error for nearly an entire day.
Anyone who ‘relies’ on a free webmail service even if it’s from the holy hind teat of Google should just STFU when it goes down.
These are the same types that laugh at “old world” solutions like having desktop client or tried and tested technologies like Exchange. How about just setting up a forward to services like Yahoo or Live(oh noes) as a backup?
But yeah…go “Cloud Computing”.
How do you think the mail that ends up at your desktop client gets there? Yeah, via a mail server. Servers go down, even paid ones.
Not as often as Google’s……I’ve had zero downtime in 5 years for both my webhosting and email. Beat that GMail lovers.
Proof please? Just saying you have no downtime, doesn’t mean it really is true.
Hey, doesn’t everyone love my new Unicorn?
Gmail is one service that’s growing quickly but it’s very un-Google to run into scalability issues .The problem exists in mobiles too
This is not a scalability issue, this is what you would call “unplanned maintenance”. Usually involves some sort of a discovered hack or flaw. My guess is the Gmail team realized that someone was messing with the service and had to pull the web version offline for a bit to fix it.
Makes me glad that I’m releasing http://rabbot.org/ today. Solves all of this stuff in one go.
Gmail works well for me. Gmail being a huge mail service provider may encounter server problems occasionally. Sure the problem will be fixed soon. Even in some paid service these problems occur. But for this reason switching away completely is not a wise decision.
It impacted me about 1/2 hour ago. I can’t even use google docs.
Gmail and Google app emails are all working fine here in our Office.
It’s NOT working for me. C’mon Google, lets hurry up the fix please.
Gmail is a free service, and you’re demanding as if you’ve been paying a fortune on a monthly basis for it. Get over yourself. You’re probably the type of clueless yahoo who calls tech support not 1 minute after your internet goes down without investigating yourself.
The nerve of some people.
Haha I’ll admit that came across a bit like that. I understand that its a free service, and that they are probably hard at work on a fix. And just for the record, no I’m not one of those people who “calls tech support not 1 minute after your internet goes down without investigating yourself.”
In that case, Thank Goodness!
Gmail is down (Europe)
update:
Gmail on iPhone: working
Gmail on XP: working
Gmail on Mac (Snow Leopard): NOT working
I’ve got nothing to do with TC, but my Gmail was down for nearly an hour. Very annoying.
Maybe it has something to do with #nogoogleday
“Hopefully they’ll acknowledge the problem on the support pages soon – which isn’t the case yet ”
They seem to be acknowledging it, now, unless this was an earlier case:
Google Apps Status
August 31, 2009 11:28:00 AM PDT
Google Mail service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users in the near future. Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change.
I have not been able to access my gmail for the past 48hours. It is incredibly frustrating!
Good morning sunshine.
I’ve been having turbulence for a few days, especially when trying to fetch old attachments.
This brought me to the conclusion not to trust gmail anymore and to download all of my emails via POP.
Have a good one.
E
gmail is working fine .
no problem .
please check your id and password carfully.
me 2, working good w/ 2 accounts
Gmail is working fine too atm in my office in Paris, France.
No issue what so ever all night long
Gmail not down for me (australia)
Oh Google again hitting users lolzz gay as Google lolz
http://live-point.net
Apparently there are other issues as well at this moment, with Gmail.
Gmail is down for me too, since yesterday in France, but only at my office. It works fine on my mobile and at home.
Gmail was not down over there (Luxembourg)
Gmail working fine here (India), but it feels sluggish than usual.
gmail working fine here (Mars)..heard that a remote friend (Pluto) has some issue
VPN is down in some area’s of pluto at the moment I think…
in last six hours I have no problem with google mail (Gmail) may be it happend in one of the servers even if it google it is not god
Not had any problems this morning.
GFAIL!!!!
uFail…
it is up for me on my ipod touch 2g on a g wireless network with dsl
I’m in Italy and have NOT been able to access my gmail for several hours. Keep getting “Temporary Error 500″.
I’ve been logging in and out of Gmail all morning, and haven’t had any problems yet. I’m in Ireland..
gmail is not working on my iphone or computer. when trying to receive mail, a red bar appears at top of my browser stating:
Gmail is temporarily unable to access your Contacts. You may experience issues while this persists. Learn more
is this a common problem?
Down here in Bangladesh
It’s been down for me in Tokyo for about 5 hours now.
“Google Mail service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users in the near future. Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change.”
I saw this message, too, but the vagueness of “near future” is troubling. Is that measured in minutes, hours or (gasp!) days?
Working for me, but way slower than usual. I can only hope for those that can’t access their accounts that all the emails are still there… otherwise = big desaster.
http://www.will...ns/mail-alt.htm for some competitors… no loss mail i suppose it is the main thing IMHO
My GMail lets me login, but for the past few days it would not let me reply or compose any message. I hope that this is fixed.
oops, I forgot to mention I’m in Canada
I’ve been having an issue with this as well.
argh!
Working fine here in buffalo ny all morning
For me it´s almost 24 hours down. I am in Santiago, Chile but I believe that has nothing to do with neither the country nor the OS. Some of my colleagues have been using Gmail yesterday just fine. Some of them use peecees some macs.
Although I understand it is a free service Google has made has believe that Gmail is safe and reliable.
It will not be the same after this experience.
This is probably not the solution for all of you, still: Had the same problem last night on my Mac OSX after installing Snow Leopard.
-> I switched “Offline Sync” of at the Advanced settings and deinstalled “Google Gears” from FireFox and everything worked again.
Google you’re being very un-google.
This is very, very, very, very, very troubling. Very troubling. Whenever I’ve used a paid service – Exchange Server, web hosts POP3 – it is up 120% of the time. It is completely unacceptable for Gmail to have 99.99% whatever uptime. It must have 120% uptime.
This is very troubling.
And your snarky comment of ’small subset of users’ – you are absolutely right. I believe it is down for a large set of users, and users of the Starship Enterprise, and martians on Mars.
This is very troubling.
I think I’m going to make an empty threat to switch away from gmail to something with 120% uptime, like Exchange.
Yes, I saw that today.
I was part of (maybe) the first wave of gmail outages. Two days ago I got the red banner of fear saying something like, “Gmail can’t access your contacts, we are working on this problem, you may notice some other issues…” Well, the other issue(s) was that I was not receiving any email.
Here’s the work around if this is affecting you:
export all your contacts, delete all your contacts, re-import all your contacts.
when i did this, i started getting my gmail again. It took about 2 hours for all the emails sent to me during the downtime to repopulate.
There’s a thread about this here:
http://bit.ly/KbHAQ
George
I noticed really poor service in the last few days….soooooooooooooo slow; Houston…wedo have a problem….
You know, everyone complains when Gmail is down, but I imagine their uptime is pretty solid.
My work email has way more problems than this. I only wish my work email had Gmail-type uptime and reliability.
http://traderbo...spx?symbol=goog
Been having trouble accessing my GMail from Stockholm, Sweden, all day long as well. With flaky connection mode I’m able to communicate, but the connection seems really intermittent.
my account doesn’t works still. But other accounts are working. May be because on the main account I have used some experimental features from GoogleLabs? May be not…
Gmail down all day in Cologne, Germany
I’m having no problems with getting into my accounts here in North Texas, but for the last few days I have not been able to create new accounts for my nieces. I get a message that says it thinks I am a spambot. I have run several malware programs and anti-virus is up-to-date, so don’t know what is going on there.
it is finally being acknowledged…
http://www.goog...;di=1&hl=en
We’re tracking today’s Gmail issues at http://downrightnow.com/gmail
downrightnow uses crowdsourcing and official announcements to keep track of service disruptions at Gmail, Twitter, Facebook and other popular web services.
Gmail down in Singapore too
Gmail is also down in Singapore
Gmail is also down in Hong Kong. I’m a paying using even…. I pay for extra storage.
Yikes…been down all day for me in Boston. Starting to go crazy. Got to do some work and get my kid’s college essays reviewed. He is trying to email me.
We Google Apps Premiere, around 80 users.
Two of them were affected (one still is right now)…
Both imap and web mail affected.
The tech support has been great as far communicating and explaining what to expect, but the recovery took time (5 hours for the first user).
The second got hit this morning (9am Eastern) and is still down 11:35am Eastern).
The access comes and goes.
The phone support person told me that both these users are on the same server, they have applied the ‘fix’ to my second, but changes are slow to kick in…
What’s interesting is the fact that not every user on the same domain has his account on the same Google server, so trouble can hit a couple of users, but the rest of the domain is fine…