August 18, 2008, 4:53 PM — Late Friday night Google solved the third Gmail outage of the past two weeks,
but questions remain about the stability of the Webmail service, which is
affecting the Google Apps hosted software suite.
Like the previous two
outages, the latest one occurred as a login error that locked users out of their
accounts. This time, some users were prevented from accessing their accounts for
more than 24 hours.
All three outages affected not only individual Gmail
users but also people who use it as part of the Google Apps suite of
collaboration and communication applications.
Google acknowledged the
Gmail problem Friday and said it affected "a small subset" of the service's
users. The company didn't immediately comment about what is causing the
recurring login problem, nor did it provide a more specific figure for the
amount of Gmail users affected.
The long outage was painful for several
Google Apps users contacted via e-mail.
Denmark's chapter of Fair
Allocation of Infotech Resources (FAIR), an international nonprofit group, just
started using Google Apps. When the outage hit, system developer Benjamin Bach
was showing the suite to his colleagues, ahead of the planned launch of FAIR
Denmark's Web site this week.
The outage lasted more than 24 hours.
"Seeing such a long outage during the very first few days makes us wonder if a
free solution provided by Google is actually 'pro' enough for us. We cannot
correspond with schools in Africa or partners in Denmark and afford being
out-of-mail for a whole day," Bach said.
FAIR, based in Norway, is devoted to
supplying computer products to developing countries. The Denmark chapter is just
getting off the ground and expects to grow its Apps user base from four people
to up to 20.
Google Apps comes in versions, including Basic and
Education, which are free, and Premier, which costs US$50 per user per year and
includes additional functionality, a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee for Gmail,
and phone technical support.
"I can give them a lot of credit for
providing a free service, but they lose some of that when saying 'your e-mail is
totally inaccessible, and we're not going to tell you why or for how long.' It's
arrogant. I'm a system administrator, so I deserve to know a little more," Bach
said.
Indeed, Google seemed slow to address this latest outage. The first
problem reports started appearing in the official Apps and Gmail
discussion forums on Thursday afternoon U.S. Eastern Time. However, Google
didn't acknowledge the problem in the forums until almost 5 p.m. on Friday, more
than 24 hours after the first reports appeared. Google declared the problem
solved shortly after 10 p.m. on Friday.
Also out for more than 24 hours
was Howard Feldstein, chairman of the Mexico chapter of Democrats Abroad,
the official U.S. Democratic Party organization for American expatriates. "We're
quite busy leading up to the convention. I have relied on Gmail not only for
e-mail but for my primary contact list and was totally isolated for more than a
day," he said.
Abhishek
Parolkar, an IT consultant in Bangalore, India, also lost access to his
Google Apps Gmail account for more than 24 hours, which disrupted important
billing messages from clients.
Sadie Upchurch, president of Glinting Communications, a public relations firm
near Atlanta, was affected for about 15 hours. "I was on client deadlines and
had to work around for re-routes and resends of e-mails from those clients," she
said.
"I do remind myself that I'm not paying for the service and that
there's a level of patience and adequate backup you've got to have when you're
getting something for free," she added.
Still, it's common for
organizations to try out Google Apps via its free Basic version before
considering a move to the fee-based Premier edition, so a wobbly e-mail
component is unlikely to entice anyone to upgrade. Google serves all of its
Gmail users, from individuals to Google Apps Premier account holders, from the
same infrastructure, so Gmail outages hit all types of users
indiscriminately.
The suite, even in its free version, is geared at
workplace use and designed for employee collaboration, which is why it contains
calendar, word-processing, spreadsheet, presentation and Web site creation
applications.
For that reason, it's unlikely that Google would consider
several lengthy Gmail outages in a span of two weeks as the norm for Apps. After
all, Google has aspirations that Apps will grow its very small presence among
large enterprises, which demand high performance and availability levels from
their software. Apps is currently used mostly by small organizations.
