Google: Gmail accounts nuked by the thousands!
If you want to get someone’s attention, “take out” their email!
Heck, even EXECUTIVES notice THAT! 
THEY usually don’t notice anything that lacks dollar signs ($)!
I learned about the importance of email when I worked in Netscape Tech Support supporting Netscape Messaging Server for their largest customers. At that time, Netscape Messaging Server was the BEST email server in the world – PARTS of it are STILL in the best email server! 😉 Even people who make email servers that don’t SCALE very well count on those parts.
In the last day or so, as many as 150,000 Gmail users have confronted the scary scenario of having years of correspondence gone. Google has encouraged the philosophy of “just store it and search it” rather than managing and deleting emails. At about noon PST on Sunday, Google started to investigate reports of an issue with Gmail. Less than 0.08% of Google’s users are affected, but when you have approximately 193 million users, that percentage takes its toll. (Just an aside – if you have a product that kills 99.99% of bacteria, and you have 10⁷ or 10⁸ bacteria, that STILL leaves a HECKUVA LOT of bacteria left! Marketing folks rely on the inability of Americans to do math!)
The news was scary enough that I checked by OWN Gmail account – whew! Still there… dodged THAT bullet!
Google engineers are working to RESTORE everyone’s email (don’t you worry – email gets deleted ONLY if thing REALLY go wrong in SEVERAL places – nuclear war comes to mind!) Google expects to have everything fully restored in about 12 hours (make that 12 SLEEPLESS hours for email administrators! 😉 On top of the sleepless hours since Sunday….).
A Gmail user asked, “What if the cloud fails?” Oh, don’t you worry little buddy… your emails are very important to other people beside YOU!
Why do you think that you share information with a “third party” (the cloud) anyway? (There is SOME hope in sight, however!)
(One of the BEST tech T-shirts that I ever saw was at MacWorld San Francisco. The T-shirt was black and sported by a large bearded gentleman. In small white letters on the front was the message, “I read your email.” )
-Bill at
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