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.
Comments
4 responses so far ↓
Garry Conn on Aug 12, 2008 at 9:30 am
I can’t begin to tell you the number of people who were contacting me on instant messenger asking me if I was having trouble. I am not sure what time this occurred, but I never had trouble. Perhaps, I was offline during this huge event. I logged back in later that day and saw that Gmail Offline or similar keyword made #1 on Hot Trends. That was weird.
Ash on Aug 12, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Admittedly, I’m addicted to Gmail. I was without options yesterday since my work uses Gmail as well and we were down for about an hour.
My favorite Tweet about it was from @hundreddollar and said:
whenever gmail’s down, i feel anxious, like the world is going to explode. gmail’s not allowed to have an off day, in my opinion.
Michael Martinez on Aug 12, 2008 at 6:04 pm
I don’t use Gmail. Never trusted it. Haven’t noticed any problems lately.
Vic on Jan 19, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Whether or not ‘we’ are too dependent on gmail really depends on what criteria you are using to measure proper levels of dependency. With the levels of ubiquity computers as a whole have gained, are we not too dependent on computers too? Cars? I guess this sort of question can be extrapolated to most anything we take for granted nowadays. [/philosophizing]
As to what criteria to use, heh, I’m way too ignorant/inexperienced to be able to suggest any. Ideas?
I can say with certainty, however, that I feel uncomfortably dependent on gmail, and would feel as naked and vulnerable as a newborn babe without [golem voice] my precious [/golem voice] gmail.
The thing with gmail (and other webmail offerings) is that it’s so common to have personal stuff like amazon accounts, bank accounts, credit cards, paypal, etc. that it becomes another possible security gap through which one’s identity could be ganked. I have more faith in the smart folks at gmail to maintain their operations than in my account not getting ‘hacked’ or password stolen.
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