Gmail Outage Sparks Rage Among Administrators

Gmail Outage Sparks Rage Among Administrators

A lengthened Gmail blackout has set off complaints among Google Apps administrators as well as top executives.


The outage started around 5 pm US Eastern Time on Wednesday which left users unable to access their email accounts. Users are prompted a "502" error message when trying to log in. Google announced the problem will be fixed by 9pm Thursday, however, that didn't happen. The company did not disclose the root of the problem and not even why it's taking them so long to restore the service.



An administrator, named as Bill W, said in a blog, "Support keeps telling me it is affecting a small number of users. This is not a temporary problem if it  lasts this long. It is frustrating to not be able to expedite these issues. I have to speak with the boss again and he's po'd (pissed off). This is considered a mission critical issue here. We may have to make other arrangements. Apparently Google mail is not very reliable. I think I would have pushed for something else before we switched if I had known the level of unreliability."



Bill W. was just among the administrators who are thwarted with the prolonged Gmail outage. The service recorded three other critical blackouts in August, which also affected individual users of the free email service and Google Apps premier customers. Google has still not released an official comment on the issue.