There must have been a rather large shortage of tech & search news yesterday as it seems a GMail hiccup by Google shut the service down or a little while, and the end result was global coverage of the event. This goes to show how many small to large businesses actually use a webmail application like Google GMail and are totally dependent on a third party free service to handle their secure and urgent company mailings.
If GMail had gone down a year ago would anyone have really cared? Possibly a handful of search bloggers and other Googlephiles, but the service goes down from here on out, and its world news. Another sign that Google has excelled yet another appliance beyond search and the business world has reacted favorably by becoming dependent upon it.
Google actually posted an apology, something we really don’t see coming that often from the company, on the GMail Blog, via Todd Jackson, the GMail Product Manager :
Many of you had trouble accessing Gmail for a couple of hours this afternoon, and we’re really sorry. The issue was caused by a temporary outage in our contacts system that was preventing Gmail from loading properly. Everything should be back to normal by the time you read this.
We heard loud and clear today how much people care about their Gmail accounts. We followed all the emails to our support team and user group, we fielded phone calls from Google Apps customers and friends, and we saw the many Twitter posts. (We also heard from plenty of Googlers, who use Gmail for company email.) We never take for granted the commitment we’ve made to running an email service that you can count on.
Do you see Google complaining when they serve spammed up search results?
Goes to show, GMail is very important to Google. Any application launched by the company which has the possibility in the long run to be used MORE THAN search, on our PC’s and mobile devices, and archive and serve ads for our private GTalk discussions has to be this important to the company.
Are we too dependent on GMail, or Google for that matter, on our day to day lives and business income?
I’d like to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
