G mail goes down… for a whole 15 minutes
If you tried to check your Gmail or Google+ late this morning and were greeted with the error above, you’re not alone. In particular, I encountered errors 500, 502, 676, 93… and some others I forgot to jot down.
Apparently Google encountered a spot of trouble with a server outage today, which affected Gmail, Google+, and several other Google web apps, sending the typically uninterrupted services to their knees.
real-time stats via downdetector.com/status/google
Yahoo, Google’s scrappy age-old nemesis, was quick to tweet about the outage – no doubt in a fit of pure, cackling glee. That seems to have been frowned upon, however, as Yahoo has since removed the tweet and entered damage control mode:
Earlier today, a tweet that reflected bad judgment was posted and has been deleted. We apologize to @Google and the @Gmail team.
— Yahoo (@Yahoo) January 24, 2014
Meanwhile, #gmailpocalypse briefly trended on Twitter in a flurry of (mostly) tongue-in-cheek panic.
It’s fascinating to see the instant impact of an outage in Google’s services, even for a short duration.
Just imagine if – gasp – Google itself went down. We’d be forced to use Bing!*
* Bing actually isn’t all that bad.
Gary works from his apartment in Portland as Zbra Studios’ Senior SEO Strategist (mostly in pajamas, with a cat or two nibbling at his leg). Those in web3 may known him as weary (or vvveary, give or take a “v”), where he works in the moonlight hours on the core team of the MetaArchitects HUB.
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