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!
7 thoughts on “I’m Dependent on Gmail. Are You?”
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Gmail runs my life, and if I am not on gmail I am on GChat which has been equally flakey lately.
In my case, most of my non-gmail.com domain email addresses are simply forwarders and my gmail.com email hosts all of these. I use the “send from” feature to send from different addresses as well.
Well, I do have one email address that isn’t simply a forwarder, but that one’s hosted on a gmail-for-domains account! So I also wonder about potential downtime.
I use gmail, but my primary addresses are all non-gmail address that I have gmail pull in for simplicity of checking them all in one place. If gmail is down (or for crazy reasons I can’t think of, were to disappear) I would just check my email at the original sources. I’d be out the one address I have that is actually @gmail.com…but…meh.
We’re too reliant on the ‘net in general.
My power was out yesterday. Wife was going nuts ’cause she couldn’t check her email — not that she was expecting anything.
Today the power is back (snowstorm took it out) but the telecom infrstructure is messed up and shes going nuts.
I am personally very reliant on email (I don’t use gmail — Google already knows too much about me). I DO however PRINT critical info out and carry hardcopy especially when I travel, rather than trusted that the info will be there in my email
not just on gmail, but in other products aswell.
but i still believe that gmail is far more reliable the most hosting companies, althought i keep a second account in yahoo so i can receive important mail , i’m not able to access my mail now, i wish i had enabled offline gmail sooner 🙁
It is worrying how dependent on gmail I am. I have tried to look for better options but have not found any. I do use other email providers too, but still trust gmail most.
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