For the last 5–hours (maybe more) my Gmail account has been inaccessible, and it is times like these that makes me worry that I could have just lost all of my emails. Sure, I have seen Gmail outages before, but when they are as extensive as this one it really makes me question the stability.
If I try and login to my account it just sits on the “Loading…” screen for awhile and eventually asks if I want to switch to the “basic” version since it is having troubles loading. I gave it a shot, but just ended up with the error seen to the right.
Ashley started a discussion in the forum asking if anyone else was having a problem, and we appeared to be the only ones. At that point I was really worried, but I went where many people turn to when Gmail goes down…the Gmail-Down Google Group. Apparently we are not the only ones with this problem, and someone offered a solution that didn’t help us:
Tried clearing all private data (incl. cookies) from browser. No idea why that should have anything to do with gmail outage but it seemed to work. Hope this helps someone.
However, there is also the more official Google Group for Gmail here, where Google reports that they are working on the issue:
Hi all,
We are aware of the issues a small sub-set of our users are experiencing when logging in and sending messages. Rest assured that our engineering team is working diligently to resolve these errors. We appreciate your patience.
Please refer back to this thread for updates as they become available.
Thanks,
Gmail Guide
I also use Google Apps to manage the email for our domain, so I decided to go and see if that still worked. Yep, it did so I am assuming that it is a specific data center that is having the troubles, and if you’re not located in that data center then you should still be able to access your account.
I am keeping my fingers crossed that my emails will comeback fully intact because I would hate to lose the emails in my account. This is probably why Gmail is still in Beta. 
I want my Gmail back! This is totally unacceptable. I haven’t been able to access my mail for 8 hrs.
I don’t know how many hours it’s been for me. Seems like forever though!
Ooooops! Nothing yet? I guess everybody hopes that this kind of trouble will never afect him, but the others… till it’s happening.
PS: I always read with POP3 on my harddisk the most important emails from GMail (~4GB in last years).
PS2: I am wondering – if someone have someemail@gmail.com can’t he configure to have all emails automaticaly forward to someemail-backup@gmail.com, but kept in someemail@gmail.com? In that way, he will always have a second source for his emails… in case those accounts are not in the same data center (that’s why it should be created maybe at totally different time… the second after few weeks). Just a thought…
PS3: Did you try POP3 access?
Hmmm, I like that forwarding idea…but I’m not sure if the forwarding would work if your account is not accessible. I’ll definitely have to look into that though.
Hmmm. I haven’t lost my email at all today all 100 times I’ve tried logging in.
I haven’t lost any email since it’s gone back up, but I’m sure several e-mails I was anticipating receiving today, important ones no less, got lost in transit…
I think i was one of the first to experience this outage…b/c last night around 9 or 10 P.M. CST I was having on and off problems accessing gmail…then an hour later, it completely went out, and has been out all up until 1 hour ago.
It makes me realize how truly dependent I’ve become on gmail when using the web and communicating. I was really shocked when i noticed it was an outage as others slowly starting having problems after I did…but I would have never expected such a long outage from Google (I couldn’t access gmail for about 20 hours)
I’m having no problems logging in. Also, if you want email backup, downloading the messages to your hard drive is probably the best option.
@curtissthompson: I know for a fact that at least 2 emails never got delivered to me that I was expecting. Luckily they weren’t anything important, but hopefully there were no important ones that I was supposed to get.
Yep, it’s remarkable. Gmail always seems rock solid but right when you let your guard down, BAM! ACCESS DENIED.
I checked my Gmail account (I only use it to test the service) and it took a long time to login. I think this was actually the first time I logged in since my account got the POP3 input, causing the delay.
This is why I use Y! mail. No, who am I kidding? I use Y! for the incredibly feature filled, relatively quick, desktop-like mail beta.
It’s also good to not worry about finding my email gone (although I hear of error codes and other glitches occasionally on the Y-mail group). That’s pretty bad though that Google has their own “Gmail Down” group. I actually didn’t know Google had groups. I looked at the site and it seems real plain and dull. I much prefer Y! groups.
I do have to say, Google docs are pretty incredible for a full online app. Also, I heard Gmail lets you stream .mp3 attachments. Pretty cool. Gmail was first on the chat, but I’m glad Y! finally copied. Now if only they could implement a chat message archive (like Gmail’s).
Is your Gmail still down?
My Gmail is back up and it looks like all of the emails that didn’t make it through during the downtime finally came though. I assume Google must have somehow been holding all of the emails in queue until the accounts were made available again, which is something I’m really glad they did.
I haven’t messed around with the Yahoo Mail Beta too much because I’ve been so addicted to Gmail, and the other reason I love Gmail is because I was able to get my name for an email address. It makes it much easier when I have to tell people what it is, and Yahoo has been around so long that it seems like everything is taken already.
So, Ryan, you have a happy end!
Thank goodness, I was really worried for awhile. I wish Google would tell us what’s up when these things happen so we know whether to expect dataloss or not.
Ever hear about Yahoo!’s (somewhat) recent release of alternate “dot” addresses?
[updates.mail.yahoo.com]
I did actually hear about that, but I think it is a little easier having an address that is all just one word. That might just be my personal preference though.