Google Gmail labelled as 'Gfail' by Twitter users

by Stevie Smith - Feb 24 2009, 17:00

Users of Google’s Gmail found themselves deprived of access for around four hours on Tuesday after the search giant’s popular mail service was abruptly knocked offline.

According to numerous reports covering the sudden outage, Gmail was struck at 09:30 GMT this morning and only began returning to some semblance of partial service at around 13:30 GMT.

The BBC news Web site reports that the four-hour blackout equates to one of the longest stretches of time Google’s users have ever been left without access to their personal and business mail accounts.

“We’re aware of a problem with Gmail affecting a small subset of users,” said Google via its online help pages. “The affected users are unable to access Gmail.”

“We’re working very hard to solve the problem and we’re really sorry for the inconvenience,” Google later added in an official blog statement. “Those users in the US and UK who have enabled Gmail offline through Gmail Labs should be able to access their inbox, although they won’t be able to send or receive emails.”

Tuesday’s failure prompted a swift response from thousands of Twitter users, who posted a tsunami of messages announcing the blackout alongside the word “gfail”.

The last notable loss of service to hit Gmail came in August of 2008 when e-mail accounts were stymied for approximately two hours, leading the search titan to launch a review of its services and implement an update for its internal systems and procedures.

According to usage figures put forth by the number crunchers at comScore, Google Gmail’s 113 million users makes it the world’s third largest e-mail provider behind only Microsoft Hotmail (283 million users) and Yahoo Mail (274 million users).

Google has said it will provide an update before the end of the day, in which it will detail when it expects to fully resolve the problem.

Around the Web