back to article Worldwide Gmail crash was due to Google Sync bug

It was a Googler misconfiguring a sync server that took out Chrome and Gmail on Monday, an engineer has stated on dev forums. The reason for Gmail's brief burnout on Monday has been winkled out, and it was connected to the rolling crashes suffered on the Chrome browser on the same day. It was a human error in configuring a …

COMMENTS

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  1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

    It must have crashed in the brief time span I was not using it.

    Lucky me!

    1. Ole Juul
      Holmes

      Re: It must have crashed in the brief time span I was not using it.

      Probably coincidental, but it also happened to coincide with a temporary drop in spam.

  2. NoneSuch Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Still beats Redmond's or Cupertino's uptime by a massive amount.

    1. Spearchucker Jones

      Maybe...

      But I'll take some down time in lieu of ads and having my inbox indexed for personalisation.

    2. toadwarrior
      Trollface

      A little downtime is better than ads and viruses.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    CORPORATE BROTHERHOOD FAIL: The usual response is:

    "We had a small problem with one of our core services that resulted in a brief outage for some of our customers. This is now resolved and we apologise to our users for the inconvenience and would like to reassure them of a return to our normal sterling service."

  4. frank ly

    "There is WRONG in the cloud. "

    That should be 'There is wrongness in the cloud', or 'There is a wrong in the cloud', or 'There are wrongs in the cloud', or perhaps 'Wrongly does/goes the cloud', or "There is something wrong......

    You're doing this deliberately aren't you?

    1. Synonymous Howard

      Re: "There is WRONG in the cloud. "

      If it can go wrong it will go wrong .. now with added syncronicity and fluffiness.

    2. Dan 55 Silver badge
      Headmaster

      Re: "There is WRONG in the cloud. "

      It's quite easy to understand, there's only one WRONG in the cloud but when it's synchronised everywhere it becomes uncountable.

    3. hplasm
      Happy

      Re: "There is WRONG in the cloud. "

      "As if millions of raindrops suddenly cried out in terror.."

    4. Tom 13

      Re: "There is WRONG in the cloud. "

      I am reminded of the old joke that to err is human but to really foul it up you need a computer. I think the computer is to the cloud as the human is to the computer.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Play store fail

    Possibly explains why I have still got a charge against a Play application I paid for and downloaded, tested, found did not work on my system and then claimed a refund against. Which still hasn't happened...

    1. Shannon Jacobs
      Holmes

      Re: Play store fail

      The Google Play appears to be dead here, too, as of the current posting.

      Bad karma for the increasing evil of the google? I started using Android when I through Apple and Microsoft were more evil, but I'm feeling like it's a closer balance of evil now.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    10 minutes more until Google Apps business SLA kicks in this month

    Come on Google crash again so you can join in the office's secret santa.

    We're counting on you.

  7. Version 1.0 Silver badge
    Coat

    Crash? What CrasDY$65c7#$@!4h?

    I noticed a few problems but who for Gods sake realistically expects 100% up-time? Even I can't manage that ... Stuff like this happens even with the best planned services - it's usually no big deal if you learn from the experience.

    I gotta go - gotta take a nap now...

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Was this limited to a specific region? I was using Gmail most of the time on Monday and noticed nothing out of the ordinary...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Was this limited to a specific region?"

      Well, at least, it affected merkins, finns and brits, that much I can say..

      1. Dave 126 Silver badge

        Re: "Was this limited to a specific region?"

        I had Chrome crash on Monday (UK) twice, within 5 minutes, glad to have stumbled on this article and that it wasn't an issue at my end.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Thankfully I was not affected, as I lost access to my account, and google refuse to help me, insisting instead that they are happy I have gotten access to my account again, and not replying to follow-up mail.

    I now run my own mail server, since about a year, that has not let me down yet.

    1. Gob Smacked
      Holmes

      "I now run my own mail server, since about a year, that has not let me down yet."

      ... it will though, at some time ...

      I run my own mailserver now for 17 years and hardware failures will always get to you. Just make sure you have a good fallback server.

      1. Allan George Dyer
        Boffin

        The choice is...

        running round like a blue-arsed fly, fielding calls from your users and trying to get answers from your outsourcer about what happened and when it will be fixed

        OR

        running round like a blue-arsed fly, fielding calls from your users and trying to identify what died and fix it.

    2. Shannon Jacobs
      Holmes

      Human beings at the google?

      I'm increasingly doubtful there are any left there. Not sure if the robots have taken over, or if it's just Daleks. Whatever it is, I think the "Don't be evil" slogan is obsolete, and the new one should be something like "We're the google and we don't care."

  10. nuked
    Holmes

    Roughly google-translated as "We got pwned".

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Lost access to my email for about 3 minutes. That's about 10 times better than my old employer's exchange setup.

    Loss of data: none

    Loss of productivity: maybe 30 seconds

    The outage isn't interesting, but the cause did make interesting reading.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    That just proves..

    .. that with online services, you're just one mistake away from problems..

    .. and so is your privacy, btw..

    1. P. Lee

      Re: That just proves..

      Its email. It is a bit like sending postcards - it isn't private even if you run your own mailbox.

      I suspect the privacy I get by ad-indexing by google is better than the security I'd get by trying to maintain my own, likely more hackable, SMTP server which would provide an inbound access point to my own network.

      My home systems are far more sensitive than my email. Its all a compromise and its quite a complicated calculation.

      1. Gannon (J.) Dick
        WTF?

        Re: That just proves..

        "My home systems are far more sensitive than my email. Its all a compromise and its quite a complicated calculation."

        I can't see how it's complicated if the people Zuck and Facebook call "Dumb Fucks" all can do it.

        Oh wait, I see what you mean.

      2. This post has been deleted by its author

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: That just proves..

        Its email. It is a bit like sending postcards - it isn't private even if you run your own mailbox.

        We've just gone live with a platform that proves (and provides) the opposite..

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The scale out and cluster Linux approach is really cost effective...

    provided you are comfortable with it crashing due to the insane complexity from time to time.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    ...

    Rogue engineer?

  15. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. The Alpha Klutz

      Re: i cant believe some cunt gets away with this

      i want to know that he was fired and/or killed.

      if they are going to be elitist then they should hold themselves to a similar standard but of course they never will.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: i cant believe some cunt gets away with this

        i want to know that he was fired and/or killed

        I see getting the dosage right is still somewhat of a problem.. Shoot someone for a human error?

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    not a problem

    Web interface was down for me for an hour or so

    IMAP with thunderbird was working fine, i just switched to that.

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