Mondays. The day of the week most closely resembling that moment when you arrive at a remote New Hampshire cabin and discover the only entertainment option is two copies of Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium. They are awful. And for some Gmail users, this Monday was even more annoying than usual, since the email service experienced a number of different problems. Emails were delayed, and attachments didn’t download.
Google started investigating the problem in the morning and has continued to post updates throughout the day. While it initially said the problem affected a mere .025 percent of the database, the company later updated that statement to the much more vague “less than 50 percent of Gmail users.” As of 3:00 p.m. EST, the company reported “Gmail service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users within the next 1 hours. Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change.”
No word on what caused the problem. But what we must contend with as far as lack of answers go, at least we have the Greek chorus of Twitter to make light of the situation.
what if ryan gosling proposed to me via gmail this morning :/
— Jessica Misener (@jessmisener) September 23, 2013
This is just gmail’s experiment in non-linear narrative.
— Irin Carmon (@irin) September 23, 2013
Gmail lagging/down = Internet snowday! ☃☃☃☃☃☃☃☃☃☃☃☃☃☃☃☃☃☃
— Matt Haughey (@mathowie) September 23, 2013
If you want to keep abreast of this service outage, check out the update page Google made, or go to Down Right Now or Down for Everyone or Just Me (although, warning, Down for Everyone or Just Me says that Gmail is working fine, so perhaps it’s not as reliable as Down Right Now).
We will get through this. And we will use it as an excuse for forgetting to send that early morning email.
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