Some Gmail Users Lost Data in Weekend Outage

A weekend outage caused some Gmail users to lose data. Google said the number of Gmail users affected was small, about 150,000, and some accounts have reportedly been restored. Google also said it was trying to maintain other services besides Gmail and stop e-mail bounces. Microsoft's Hotmail and Research In Motion have also had disruptions.
Gmail experienced an outage Relevant Products/Services during the weekend that, according to Google, affected a relatively small number of users. Some problems reportedly continued through Monday, including loss of all e-mails in inboxes and sent-mail folders.

Complaints began showing up on the Google Help Forum Sunday afternoon. One user reported that his account was at first "unreachable," and, when he finally was able to log in, all e-mail had disappeared, as well as chat history, settings and labels Many others posted similar problems. One noted that his account has been reset "so it's like a brand-new Gmail account."

'Service Disruption'

As of early Monday afternoon, the Google Apps Status Dashboard reported there was still a "service disruption." The software giant hasn't indicated the cause of any problems, although it said it was working to fix the problems. Some accounts have reportedly been restored.

A Google Gmail engineer named Mike CH posted on the support forum early Monday morning that "we have temporarily locked the affected users out of their accounts whilst we perform repairs." He added that "accounts that are affected are fully disabled," and the company was trying to disable only Gmail so other Google services would be available in the meantime, and so that e-mail would stop bouncing and get "queued up for later delivery instead."

After the first reports began appearing, Google said the outage affected only 0.29 percent of worldwide users, while the latest update indicates 0.08 percent. That's a tiny percentage of the total user population, but a substantial actual number of users -- about 150,000.

Hotmail, BlackBerry Outages

Google promotes the uptime of its apps as a key selling point, and it's generally close to 99.99 percent. As a precaution, the company has given directions under its Help menu on how to back up Gmail to other e-mail accounts.

Reliability, especially of critical e-mail accounts, is of course essential to a service's reputation, as is the company reaction when outages occur. In early January, Microsoft Relevant Products/Services's Hotmail caused some users to temporarily lose access Relevant Products/Services to their e-mails and folders. The Redmond, Wash.-based company issued notices and updates on its Windows Live Solution Center and posted an apology.

In December, BlackBerry users got hit with two outages and related delays a week apart. Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry and manager of its e-mail service, said the outage affected customers in the Americas, as well as in China, South Korea, Australia and other countries. According to hundreds of messages posted on Twitter and other social-networking services, the outage appeared to be large.

Before that, there were also BlackBerry outages in February 2010 following a software upgrade and also in April 2007. It's not clear if the outages have had an impact on BlackBerry sales.

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