{mosimage}Seattle — Google Inc. on Monday said that “many Gmail users” were unable to access the email service since about 2 p.m. Pacific Time after encountering a “502 Error” message that lasted a couple of hours caused a considerable stir.
The malfunction occurred during the afternoon of August 11, US time. At 6:30pm (EST), over one hour after the first reports of Gmail going down, A Google rep announced that Google has finally figured out the issue and it should be fixed shortly.Since businesses were closed during those hours in Europe, Africa and the Asia Pacific region, comparatively few users outside North and South America were affected.
Those thinking if they are alone in experiencing the breakdown can find comfort on Twitter, which is up and sizzling with Gmail down alerts. People displayed their temper on Twitter about the outage with typical tweet: “Ah! No Email! Save Us!” They complained that outages on Web services have been happening a lot lately. They commented about the outrage on popular tech websites and made snarky comments about other people’s panic.
“Gmail crash has affected millions of users for more than 50 minutes now and the outage is still hitting most Gmail users.”
A Google Groups thread has official word from Google that they are working on it. But from the Google representatives’ updates, it looks like that this rep really has no idea how widespread the issue may be. 20 minutes after the outage began, 5:31 pm, Google said they are away of 502 errors.
In fact it appears that a large section of affected users trying to use their Gmail accounts — received a “502 error message,” which generally indicates a failure in communication between two servers involved in handling the request.
There are approximately 92 million Gmail users worldwide, and according to statistics published earlier this year by ComScore Media Metrix, putting it well behind MSN/Hotmail (256 million) and Yahoo (255 million). The number of Gmail accounts had grown by nearly 50 percent during the previous year after the service allowed people to open accounts without an invitation from an existing user.
Then at 5:47 pm, that Google rep said they are still “investigating” the issues but some people may be able to “access their accounts via IMAP, POP access, and iGoogle”.
Google said the malfunction in the contacts system used by Gmail prevented the e-mail system from loading properly. The company also said that there may be minor delays in deliveries even though all mail is safe.
Users across the United States, Canada and India reported problems with Gmail and a Google employee also reported that the company’s own corporate e-mail account was down.
Regardless of the problem, it now appears to have been identified and fixed. A Google spokesman said the issue has been fixed and Gmail is functioning normally. Several mail users contacted by InternetNews.com report their service is back and working after being unable to access it.
In response to a request for an explanation about the problem, Google sent the following statement to InternetNews.com:
“Since about 2 p.m. Pacific Time today, many Gmail users have been unable to access their email. We are very sorry for this interruption in service. The issue is being caused by a temporary outage in the contacts system used by Gmail, which is preventing Gmail from loading properly. We are starting to roll out a fix now and hope to have the problem resolved as quickly as possible. Even though you may not be able to get to your inbox right now, your mail is safe, including new incoming messages.”
However, even as Gmail users spend hours a day checking their mail and chatting online, the outage did not seem to make them any more productive by depriving them of their means of procrastination. Claire Hardy, a 28-year-old jury consultant in Costa Mesa, went to the website The Nest to talk to friends about the Gmail outage. She changed her Facebook status to say, “Claire would like Gmail to work ASAP.” She refreshed Gmail every 20 minutes to see whether the site was working again.
“It made me less productive because I needed to make sure I was communicating with my friends,” she said, “but we were communicating via other means that were not as efficient as Gmail.”
In addition to be a key application in Google’s lineup of free consumer services, Gmail is also central to its Google Apps suite for business users.
On the other hand, the stoppage caused a considerable stir on Twitter, and search terms such as “gmail down,” “gmail outage,” “gmail error,” “gmail 502,” and “gmail status” are still prominent on Google Labs’ Hot Trends list of frequent searches.