Google has touted the reliability of its cloud-based products — web services like Gmail and Docs that live on remote Google servers, which users can access from anywhere.
Of course, if you were one of the estimated 150,000 people whose Gmail accounts vanished into the ether Sunday night, you may be re-evaluating the efficacy of these cloud-based services.
In a statement, Google said the bug is affecting less than 0.08 percent of the Gmail user base.
“Our engineers are working as quickly as possible and we hope to have everything back to normal soon. We’re very sorry for the inconvenience to our customers.”
With more than 150 million Gmail accounts worldwide, 0.08 percent equals roughly 150,000 accounts, which isn’t that many in percentage terms. On the other hand, if you arrived at work Monday morning to discover that you could not access your e-mail account, the fact that less than 0.1 percent of users were affected is probably little consolation.
The worst part? Some users reported that after their accounts were restored, all of their messages — in some cases years of correspondence — had vanished. Lame!
“Dude!!!!!!!!!!!” one panicked Gmail user wrote on Google’s support forum. “Don’t scare me I have 4 years worth of eMail on that!!!!!!!!”
But fear of the fail is warranted, apparently.
“My contacts are intact, but nothing else,” another aggrieved Gmail user wrote. “The folders have reset to default, my signature line is blank, the ‘theme’ is changed back to the default and — of course — every single email from the last 7 years has vanished completely.”
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