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back to article Gmail goes titsup for 30 MILLION PUNTERS

Google admitted that an outage last night to its Gmail service affected around 10 per cent of its userbase - in other words, around 30 million people were unable to access their email online. The downtime, according to the Chocolate Factory, lasted up to two hours for some punters. However, reports trickling into The Register …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Chocolate factory mail melt down

    Unable to send targeted ads for hours sobs google privacy haters

    1 11
    1. JohnG
      Reply Icon

      Re: Chocolate factory mail melt down

      It was the strain of all those Easter eggs.

      0 0
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Paris Hilton

      Re: Chocolate factory mail melt down

      THIS IS WHY I DONT WASTE TIME ON THE INTERNET YOU GET USED TO USING SOMETHING AND THEN POOF IT DISSAP

      8 3
    3. Scorchio!!
      Reply Icon
      Happy

      Re: Chocolate factory mail melt down

      Targeted ads? What targeted ads? I ain't seen no steenkun ads for years now. (Cheeky grin.)

      0 0
  2. A Non e-mouse Silver badge
    Headmaster

    Lies, dammed lies, and statistics

    Google says the outage affected 10% of those who tried to access their mail.

    El Reg says that it affected 10% of googles user base.

    Who says that 10% of googles user base were trying to access their e-mail at that time ?

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    1. Anonymous IV
      Reply Icon
      Thumb Down

      6.45pm (Pacific Time)

      Couldn't the author have gone to the effort of telling us what time that is in BST? It would save the rest of us having to work it out, or ignoring it.

      6 3
    2. Stoneshop
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      Re: Lies, dammed lies, and statistics

      "Google admitted that an outage last night to its Gmail service affected around 10 per cent of its userbase"

      Before you choose the Pedantic Grammar Nazi icon, make sure your pedanticity is up to scratch.

      0 4
      1. mhenriday
        Reply Icon
        Headmaster

        Reading comprehension ?

        «We've determined that this issue affected less than 10 per cent of the Google Mail users who attempted to access their accounts during the affected timeframe.» What part of the above period, Stoneshop, do you not understand ? I suspect the difficulty lies in the subordinate (relative/dependent) clause («who attempted to access their accounts during the affected timeframe»). Such clauses usually appear in children's speech at around two years of age, but obviously they can occasion difficulties for the unwary ; I hope you will find the information found on this site ( http://www.chompchomp.com/terms/subordinateclause.htm) of help in dealing with complex sentences in the future....

        Henri

        PS : Pedantic grammar nazi, as I here presume that it was indeed a genuine misunderstanding of the grammar that lead you to post....

        1 0
    3. DJ Smiley
      Reply Icon
      Trollface

      Re: Lies, dammed lies, and statistics

      10% of (one day) = 2.4 hours

      That does.

      Service down time : 2.4 hours = 10% of users on average effected ;)

      1 4
      1. I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects
        Reply Icon
        Facepalm

        Re: Lies, dammed lies, and statistics

        "10% of (one day) = 2.4 hours = 10% of users on average affected"

        Nope.

        2.4 hours is 10% of 24 hours; not 10% of the users.

        1 0
        1. Scorchio!!
          Reply Icon
          Trollface

          Re: Lies, dammed lies, and statistics

          ITYHBT!

          HTH.

          0 0
    4. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Lies, dammed lies, and statistics

      Googles user numbers for Google+ are Lies, dammed lies

      0 1
  3. AndrueC Silver badge
    Angel

    I'm smug, then. I do have a GMail account but hardly ever use it. I prefer to run my own email server (VPOP3 on Win7) and yes, I rely on POP3.

    But..I've had outages of my own kit and they usually last at least half a day on account of not being willing to leave work just to fix it. EMail is useful but it ain't /that/ important to me. Schadenfraude in IT is usually inappropriate :)

    6 1
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Schadenfraude in IT is usually inappropriate

      So true. Whenever I read of an outage of the kind that could occur here, I resist the urge to smugness and instead make a small sacrificial offering to the IT Gods (they seem to be happy with a barbecued slice from the hide of the Marketing Director)

      7 0
    2. Iad Uroboros's Nemesis
      Reply Icon
      Windows

      hMailServer

      Yup, I am a POP3 user too...but I use hmailserver rather than VPop3 (on Windows 7 too). A) because it's free and B) because it has never screwed up yet (after about 5 years' use).

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      1. AndrueC Silver badge
        Reply Icon
        Thumb Up

        Re: hMailServer

        To be fair, VPOP3 hasn't screwed up for me either. Unfortunately a couple of years ago they revamped the UI and it went from being a paragon of ease of use (I'd even used it as examples in presentations) to being far less intuitive.

        No what's screwed up for me is Windows Update (twice) and my SSD (fixed with a firmware upgrade).

        0 0
    3. eulampios
      Reply Icon

      postfix MTA

      Got postfix+spamassassin running on two machines with one relaying messages for another. One machine runs Debian, another -- Ubuntu. mutt is superb on both. No need for either imap or pop3, thanks to ssh. Never had any outages.

      Besides that, do have two more gmail accounts through IMAP and mutt with about 7 thousand messages total. No problems with both either.

      1 0
      1. eulampios
        Reply Icon

        Re: postfix MTA

        Should have not bragged about it, since I (first time) can't now send messages to the outside world. My isp's smtp server is malfunctioning. And BTW, according to my message headers, it's a Microsoft shop.

        1 0
    4. mhenriday
      Reply Icon
      Pint

      Agree, Andrue, that Schadenfreude is inappropriate,

      not least when it comes to IT. But the Reg - or more accurately, certain Reg bloggers, seem to have adopted «Schadnefruede ist die beste Freude» as their very own rallying cry, due, at least to some degree, to the fact that it tends to elicit responses from us suckers, who seem always ready to take the bait....

      Henri

      2 0
  4. Neil Barnes Silver badge
    Coat

    at time of writing it hadn't got back to us

    Probably had a gmail account, then...

    (the one with an envelope in the pocket, thanks!)

    4 0
  5. nemo20000
    FAIL

    Related?

    I’ve recently started receiving somebody else’s Gmail. Without naming the accounts in question, my example@... account is now also getting exam.ple@... mails.

    Surely that’s not right.

    0 3

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Vitani
      Reply Icon

      Re: Related?

      That's a feature of gmail, you can send emails to example@ and put any amount of dots in there and it'll still get to you - e.x.a.m.p.l.e@ = ex.am.pl.e@ = exam.ple@ = example@

      4 0
    3. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Related?

      If you read all the stuff Google tell you then you'll find out that john.smith, johnsmith, Jo.hnsmith etc. are all the same so if you had johnsmith then no one should have been able to sign up for any dotted version of it

      0 0
    4. Anonymous IV
      Reply Icon

      Re: Related?

      In the Google email address model thisemail@domain.com can be written as this.email@domain.com, or even t.h.i.s.e.m.a.i.l@domain.com. all full stops in the section before the @ sign are ignored...

      0 0
    5. Andy_H
      Reply Icon

      Re: Related?

      As I remember you can.

      e.g. joebloggs@gmail.com

      joe.bloggs

      j.o.e.b.l.o.g.g.s

      etc

      So you own them all, I remember reading it when setting up my account a while back.

      0 0

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  7. TheWeddingPhotographer

    remember Google calender?

    That went tits up too, and for a lot of users never recovered

    0 1

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  8. mark l 2 Silver badge

    Im use thunderbird and IMAP for my gmail account and couldn't get on last night so when they said it wasn't affecting users of POP3 and IMAP it was down for me but my own IMAP server was working so i know it wasn't a network problem

    0 0
    1. eulampios
      Reply Icon

      Same here with two gmail accounts via IMAP+mutt (with headers and msgs caching is akin to POP) on 2 machines. Very rarely do I have a "Server error" messages, when one account would get down for a few minutes.

      0 0
  9. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge
    Coat

    ...at time of writing [Google] hadn't got back to us with [a] comment.

    From which we can deduce that the problem's been caused by the Oompah Loompahs going on strike. (Orange flu?)

    Mine's the half-height one, thanks.

    0 0
  10. Iain Hamilton

    Imap was definately affected. I couldn't access my gmail account over imap for a couple of hours.

    0 0
  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I wonder

    How many of those 300m GMail accounts are from people (like myself) who were forced to create one in order to post videos or comments on YouTube, but never use it for anything else (esp. email)?

    1 2
  12. Wesley Wakeman
    IT Angle

    Of the 300 million user base are all 300 million email users or are some email some apps etc?

    0 0
  13. William Boyle

    X Sigma

    Let's see. 10% x 120 minutes == 12 minutes of total downtime for Google's email customers. If that is all the downtime for a year, this is 5 sigma (more or less) uptime - a very good metric for web services! I deal with performance/reliability issues as a senior systems/performance engineer for a VERY large internet company, and we would be delighted to provide our customers with this level of service (I am working hard to get to 6 sigma - about 5-6 minutes of downtime a year).

    1 1
    1. John H Woods Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: X Sigma

      I'm confused - I thought sigma referred to standard deviations from the mean. Is it now also used as a replacement for the '5 nines / 6 nines' etc terminology that we used to use for uptime?

      0 0
  14. DasBub
    Facepalm

    Smudge mode

    I was sure it said "smudge mode," implying that people had to start using smoke signals. I was going to give you cleverness points.

    0 0
    1. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Smudge mode

      It is a Red Dwarf reference.

      C.

      0 0
      1. phear46
        Reply Icon

        Re: Smudge mode

        I can't believe you had to explain that....

        0 0
      2. DasBub
        Reply Icon
        Gimp

        Re: Smudge mode

        Yes, I got it, I just misread it at first.

        And there will be no points awarded for Red Dwarf references... unless they're from the first four seasons.

        0 0
        1. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Re: Re: Smudge mode

          I'm not enough of a RD nerd to know if that line is from S1-4, sorry.

          C.

          1 0
        2. VeganVegan
          Reply Icon
          Trollface

          Re: Smudge mode

          What is Red Dwarf?

          1 0
          1. Openminded Cynic
            Reply Icon
            Devil

            Re: Smudge mode

            Don't make me go all Ace Rimmer on your ass!

            0 0

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