Hope that this is the first post and I can summarize for the rest of the Reg readers that otherwise would waste their time reading the complete thread.

- "This is what happens when you trust such essential service to a third party..."

- "Clouds are just a fad, see this is what they actually can deliver...."

- "Oh, come on, this is just in keeping with their uptime promise and paying customers will be refunded...."

- "Yes, but for SMBs there is little alternative and other mail services are even worse..."

- "For me, gMail has worked wonderfully ever...."

Paris, because even she can predict the kind of comments after reading a few of these threads that comment on Google mail outages.

With reference to Ted's "Fail Loop" article, especially the quote from Schmidt, looks like the red face resulting from excessive hubris and arrogance came sooner than old Eric thought. We're getting it whether we want it or not? Not on your life, sunshine. I want my infotech to work all the time, not just when yours decides to.

As riveting as these "Google is the new face of evil because some people can't get to email right now" stories are, I have experienced similar outages from every email provider I have every used, from ISPs to technology employers who supposedly know better (see "Summary of posts" #3 with a splash of #4). The main difference is that GMail outages occur where people can easily see and bitch about them. But I'm glad that the Reg has a convenient story that they can cut and paste rather than doing actual work.

Paris, 'cause she knows a thing or two about.... oh, never mind....

No access this morning either, sure other mail serves have problems but Gmail has many users relying on it for their email, Ive used email well before the clouds formed and it's disappointing but I guess to be expected.

New mantra "Must have patience.. Must have patience.. Must have patience.."

Two days now.

POP3 is working, but no SMTP. and no webmail.

Ho Hum....