Gmail is down | Hacker News Reader

Gmail is down

gmail.com

40 pointsdoronrotem39 comments

We're aware of a problem with Gmail affecting a small subset of users. The affected users are unable to access Gmail. We will provide an update by February 24, 2009 6:30 AM PST detailing when we expect to resolve the problem. Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change. From: http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Announcements-and-...

That's a pretty large small subset. Everyone I talked to this morning, in western europe, eastern europe, and australia (and I in the US), was unable to access gmail.

Is it really necessary to post a thread every single time a large site goes down?

Not only that, I think it is really bad form to submit something like this without checking if it hasn't been submitted already.

Takes two seconds to scan 'new'.

Yes.This came six minutes later. But people came here because of the point and the number of comments.

I upvoted this one because gmail seemed more appropriate a link than twitter.

Good point.

Still, then the author of this one could have suggested an edit rather than to resubmit.

Well, when I entered HN I looked at the top stories and didn't see yours. Then I logged in and submitted mine.

It is possible I missed your item, or that it wasn't on the first page, or that by the time I logged and submitted mine yours was submitted.

Sorry if you feel I swiped you karma.

mine ? I did not submit this, somebody else did.

The front page does not show recent submissions, but 'new' does. The front page uses an algorithm based on the 'acceleration' of postings, their age and total points to figure out what to display.

Misery loves company.

well yes!!! especially gmail....i need my fix

Wow, I just realised how much I rely on gmail.

Yeah, and how much I have been putting off using the offline mode :)

Just recently installed (Downloaded? Activated?) offline mode. So glad I did. I can't wait for Google Calendar to start this, then I'll have outlook effectively replaced.

Google, your new single point of failure...

Reading this drives everyone to immediately check his account further increasing the load on the servers. Maybe we should sit back, relax and remember the times when email did not yet exist.

It's not a load problem, most likely. I think Google is well equipped to deal with load spikes, and in any case, we'd see a more gradual failure. This was pretty sudden.

Twitter seems to confirm that sentiment: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=Gmail+is+down

"336 more results since you started searching."

It's amazing to see how fast it's spreading through Twitter...

Also quite funny to see a thread on this comments page complaining about a single duplicate HN submission, when twitter has thousands of "Gmail is down" duplicate tweets.

The compression ratio on twitters db must just be astounding.

Now it's "1543 more results since you started searching."

As if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

It would be funny if all those tweets about Gmail crash Twitter.

A friend of mine is reporting the same problem down here in Honolulu (on Clearwire wireless) but I'm on RoadRunner (also in Honolulu) and all of Google's services work just fine for me.

So yeah... is this really necessary? Everyone and their brother uses Google/Gmail, the only thing you're doing here is letting everyone know you're were the first on the scene. But, you probably weren't, and the first guy on the scene didn't care.

Now it's fine and (mostly-)working for me. except one error message that says "some features could no be loaded due to a few errors"

Chat too isn't working

Chat is one of the features that could no be loaded due to a few errors.

But Google Docs is fine.

"The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request.

Please try again in 30 seconds."

Not the best error message for a failing service IMHO.

Just curious here; I'm a developer who has to write messages like this from time to time.

What specifically is bad about it? Do you have any suggestions to what it should be instead?

I was referring to the "try again in 30 seconds". When your service is failing, maybe it's not the best time to invite users to pummel it with requests. I think a generic "try again later" would work better.

If gmail users don't stop complaining on twitter, we'll also see the fail whale there soon. Seems to be the dominating topic there.

Great blistering balls of fail whale. Still not working for me. Guess I get what I pay for. Oh well, to the internets...

> Guess I get what I pay for.

Great sentiment if you're using the free version, but we have clients hooked up to it paying £25 per account.

Thankfully, only 1 has noticed so far and she was quite accommodating. :)

They are testing their new offline feature.

(Yes, I stole this comment from Reddit...)

Just experienced problems with my Google-Apps Account. Hope they'll fix it soon.

Seems to be back up now.

yep. it is up.

Oops... the system encountered a problem (#6502)

dupe:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=492869

It's back up in Belgium.

Gmail is down?

Now I'm not sure if up-vote or down-vote...

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