Gmail Down | Hacker News Reader

Gmail Down

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111 pointsunreal3767 comments

Likely to be one of the least interesting comment threads ever on HN.

It would be nice if people who posted these 'x is down' threads turned them into polls so that the extent (or not) of a problem could be seen. Even better if the poll had some large geographical options.

A poll would not be possible: http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll

I made one as polling on HN is down.

http://www.polljunkie.com/XAq3zW/Poll16008.aspx

It's only a partial outage (Google says 2% of users - much lower than I suspected).

Mine's been down for about half an hour (I'm in the UK). Someone did an Ask HN where it was mentioned that #gmail was trending on twitter which suggests that the problem is widespread. Edit: it is trending on twitter in the US at least. I didn't bother checking other locations.

I suppose one doesn't need to make the obvious observation that Google are of aware of the problem:

http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=issue&ts=13...

Edit2: It's back up for me. Now we wait to see what caused it, which is where the interesting technical information will emerge.

Me too, brazilian here...

also in Brazil, though workin' fine for me

was down. back up as of about 5 minutes ago. US-CO

One of our accounts was down.. but just one. US-CO

same in Spain

Down in India too

Nope, mine is working very fine. Seems like some users are affected, or may be problem with some part of data and infrastructure.

It just came back, India.

I, for one, was hoping "show detailed technical info" would show me some detailed technical info, you know, to keep me going while gmail gets some defibrillation.

But all it says is "Numeric Code: 93". What's that? lmgtfy doesn't help - partly because google groups/forums are also down, and that appears to be where the answers are.

I had the pleasure of looking through forum post after forum post on Numeric Code 93 shortly after the problem started. This actually didn't appear to help. There was no information, only people reporting the same issue over and over.

We joked about this "detailed technical info" in the office as our email was down. Why aren't unhelpful error codes dead?

The status page indicates that it's a service disruption: http://www.google.com/appsstatus

Some Universities have also posted the issue to their pages: https://sysnews.ncsu.edu/

There's certainly an opportunity of a side discussion on the use of cloud computing for services.

Is this a sign of an exceptional service that a minor outage ( I haven't seen it in my personal account or two apps accounts ) causes so much talk about it?

It's a sign that despite all the focus on new gadgets and forms of interaction, the really important stuff are the service that were figured out decades ago. People aren't talking about it because of what a great service gmail is, people are talking about it because ZOMG EMAIL IS DOWN!!!

You can go days without tweets. You can turn off your IRC window or Google+ hangout. You can lose your phone and recover, most of us have. But for a tech person losing email is being cut off from the world.

It's weird. When I was a kid, it took hours to make a trans-atlantic call to my grandmother. Now I feel like a man lost in the desert if I'm momentarily disconnected from globally available near-lightspeed communication.

For those looking for a distraction while email is temporarily gone, why not contemplate the lighter side of the singularity: http://www.cracked.com/video_18400_why-scariest-sci-fi-robot...

Still loading and working fine for me.

Same here.

That is an awful interface for the color blind.

The Google UI Law:

The quality of a Google UI is proportional to the number of users expected to see it.

(This is bad, but of course AdWords is the most glaring example.)

Mine's fine...

"We’re sorry, but your Gmail account is temporarily unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience and suggest trying again in a few minutes."

When I click on "show detailed technical info" it says Code 93

Yeah, that's very detailed technical info.

Gmail is telling me that I have an incorrect log/pass, not that it is down. Successfully checked my email a few hours ago...

Title of post: Gmail Down

Opened up the article: :Less than 2% of gmail users can't access gmail.

Hype much? Though email is one of those things that you never want to go down. I couldn't give two shits if any website goes down for a little bit of time on the rare occasion but email? That could make me miss the spam / opportunity of a lifetime.

There's over 260 million Gmail users. I understand the outage percent is low but at 2%, that's still 5.2 million people. That's bound to spark some talk on the interwebs.

Perhaps they're distracted. http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120416085550303

Hmm only 1 of my 2 apps domains seems to be suffering an outage.

My personal gmail service is down too; however, my Google Apps gmail is fine. Not too concerned though. Gmail has been very solid for me throughout the years.

My personal is down, but my work email is fine. However, some coworkers' work email is down, but their personal is fine.

Sporadic is definitely the name of the game here.

Another opportunity for Google to realize that their Email service is lot more important and substantive than their Plus service.

The things I think would do well on HN never get upvoted, the things I come across and don't submit are always the ones that do.

API appears to be working, my Mail.app and Sparrow app are receiving mail fine.

Enterprise Google mail also appears to be working.

Mine is working fine. Sent a mail, even received one. Last few mails are opening too.

emporary Error (500)

We’re sorry, but your Gmail account is temporarily unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience and suggest trying again in a few minutes.

If the issue persists, please visit the Gmail Help Center »

Try Again Sign Out

Show Detailed Technical Info

but Google Apps is working fine

Normal Gmail is working for me, but one of apps accounts is throwing 500s.

I have one gmail account down and two up. Sounds very localized, to me.

It's back up for me, with a Swedish account, I am in Sydney Australia.

Email down for me. Glad this is getting attention.

Note that docs are still working.

My email is down, but gchat in the same tab is fine.

If everyone's saying their status,then mine is working fine.

It's pretty much working for me here in San Francisco, CA.

Figured this was the case. 4 of my emails are out.

It's down for a few people in my office too.

Confirming on my non-apps account.

Works for me in Ireland.

Gmail is Back for me

... and we're back!

down for me. US North West (10:25 AM Pacific time)

mine is out but some people in my office aren't

Run to the hills!

It's back now.

IMAP works!

Saying that Gmail is down is just like saying that your BitTorrent speed was much faster yesterday than it is today.

This is only problem for the people who use Google Apps. But even they could backup their email with IMAP.

Google Apps seems fine, looks like it's only gmail.

It seems like a good time to reflect on the concept of The Cloud. I run my mail off a 400MHz Pentium 3 in my closet, which would scale up to (probably) a few hundred users, enough for the companies of most of the people having problems here.

And unlike Gmail, the Pentium 3 in your closet can never go down :)

This issue isn't really that the service is down. From the perspective of the "help desk", the issue at the moment seems to be that the help desk is now "helpless desk", which an awkward situation to be in. Earlier, I e-mailed my University help desk since at the time the Google Status page had not been updated. Now it has, so I know it isn't just me.

But unfortunately (though not unexpectedly), the help desk is just as much in the dark as I am. They can't tell me: who it affects, how widespread it is, when it will be fixed, or even what the issue is. I wonder if "large" companies or organizations that use Google Apps get better support or have priority support in some way to get such information.

Although, my account seems to be working again, so that's good to know.

You would be more in control of your holiday airliner trip if you were allowed to fly the plane instead of the qualified pilot, that might not be a good thing though.

Visibility of the issue is dependent on knowing what the problem is. When outages are only an hour to two long, would you rather the technician spend the time communicating the issue or fixing it? This problem exists whether your technician is working locally or as part of a cloud service.

And when it does go down, how long is it going to take you to get it back up and running?

It depends on why it went down.

Sounds good. Wanna host my email accounts? I need a slick web interface, first-class spam protection, smart filters, instant search and data protection. For free, of course.

And when that P3 finally kicks the bucket? Or a power outage/earthquake/insert problem of your choice happens? I'm happy knowing that if my gmail is down, there is an entire team of people working to fix it - with no effort on my part at all. Just keep a backup of your mail and this whole cloud thing ain't so bad (hopefully your mail is backed up anyway cloud or no).

Seems like sarcasm.

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