I’ve been trying to access my Gmail account these past few minutes, to no avail. It turns out I’m not alone. Gmail is, indeed, down. I guess one doesn’t really appreciate something until it’s gone or missing–or in this case, inaccessible. One would’ve thought that with Google being the big company it is now, would be invulnerable to downtime. I thought wrong.
Try again after 30 seconds? Yeah, right. Millions are probably doing the same it makes you wonder how many folks out there are pulling their hair out in temporary bursts of insanity. We need our Gmail, after all. We need to get in touch. And when it’s a matter of your business or your work relying on a single piece of online software to communicate, you somehow feel you’re screwed when you can’t log in. I even think I’m going through withdrawal right now.
Incidents like these have me wondering. How dependent on the cloud have we become? Some might argue that using Gmail for business correspondence is not a very wise choice. But come to think of it, even other communications providers can fail. You might forget to pay for your domain. You might forget to pay for your subscription. Or any other service could go offline, as well. Are you using POP or IMAP through a local email client? What if your hard drive crashes and you lose all your precious emails (and you don’t have online backup!)?
At least I can still send SMS my colleagues here and around the globe. The minute my mobile phone loses its signal, I would really feel disconnected!