Google Gmail Users Hit With Another Service Disruption
September 24 2009 - 12:45PM
Dow Jones News
Google Inc. (GOOG) said a "small subset" of Gmail users were
unable to access their accounts on Thursday morning, the second
outage to hit the popular email service this month.
The company didn't immediately provide details about the cause
or the scope of the outage but said full service was expected to be
restored soon. The company acknowledged the issue at about 7:30
a.m. Pacific time (10:30 a.m. ET) and provided readers with a
work-around solution to access their accounts.
Google then said on its Gmail help page at 8:29 a.m. PT that
service had been restored for some users and that it expected a
resolution for all users within an hour. It also said some users
might continue to experience problems with their contact lists.
The disruption follows similar issues that have affected Gmail
users in recent months. In February, Google mail users around the
world were locked out of their accounts for up to 24 hours after
the company introduced new software that triggered a bug in the
email program's code.
Gmail went down for about an hour and 45 minutes on Sept. 1,
during which time users could access their email only through
third-party applications such as Microsoft Outlook. A company
executive apologized after that incident in a blog post, saying the
outage was "a Big Deal."
The latest service glitch, while apparently much smaller than
earlier outages, will likely increase concerns about the
reliability of Web-based software, which Google is promoting as an
alternative to Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) packaged products.
Shares in Google were down 0.3% at $497.10 in midday
trading.
-By Scott Morrison; Dow Jones Newswires; 415-765-6118;
scott.morrison@dowjones.com