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Gmail having issues

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Re: Gmail having issues

#101

Post by mehrdadn »

Jap2-0 wrote: post #69
petercooper wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we're unusual in not relying on third parties for list management. We can rollback. Or I might just comment out the 'unsub on hard bounce' code for the rest of the week..! :)

Unsub on two consecutive bounces seems more reasonable to catch flukes (or Gmail going down)?

Logically you'd expect unsubscribe to only act after lots of bounces of this format when the address has been receiving mail fine before. It also seems reasonable not to trust such bounces for the entire domain for a while when this happens to lots of other addresses that have worked fine before. Not that I expect software currently works this way, but it does seem like a common sense thing to code in.

Re: Gmail having issues

#102

Post by Zenst »

redwards510 wrote: post #63
firebaze wrote: post #47

As quite a few googlers appear to read and write on HN, I'd really welcome an insider info on what's going on the last few days. Sure there will be some internal turmoil going on right now, but isn't there some non-confidential info to share? Can't imagine this will hurt the image of google neither in the short nor long run, quite the opposite.

In lieu of an actual Googler, how about some educated speculation? It blows my mind that Google can even have problems like this. Aren't their apps highly distributed across tons of CDNs? Don't they have world class Devops people that roll out changes in a piecemeal fashion to check for bugs? How exactly can they have an issue that can affect a huge swath of their customers across countries? Insight appreciated.

I speculate that for many companies, work from home has been at most, less impacting than they thought.

However, I'd speculate that in this instance, when you get that .0001% problem, less hands on deck makes work from home aspects less easier. Akin to remotely fixing somebodies PC over standing behind them.

With that premise I'd speculate in this instance that whilst not the root cause, may of been a small ripple that led to that root cause and/or lead to a slower resolution than what would normally get.

Those speculations aside, it will only highlight what that some tooling needs to adjust for remote workers as does design and set-ups more. Water cooler talk is not just for gossip and a counter would be more regular on-line group socialising at a work level so that not only the companies but the workers can fully adapt and embrace the work medium; But so the kinks and areas that need polishing can be polished and made better for all.

Lastly, I'd speculate that I'm totally wrong and yet what I said may well anecdote with some out there and resonate with others.

Re: Gmail having issues

#103

Post by noemit »

is there a product you could use, like a cache layer for gmail? An investor I know would love that product. I understand things go down, but it's actually quite a pain to lose access to your existing emails and calendar events. Could he just use a Mail app like Outlook? Yes. But that's too complicated to set up I think.

Re: Gmail having issues

#104

Post by sellyme »

aprdm wrote: post #79
redwards510 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In lieu of an actual Googler, how about some educated speculation? It blows my mind that Google can even have problems like this. Aren't their apps highly distributed across tons of CDNs? Don't they have world class Devops people that roll out changes in a piecemeal fashion to check for bugs? How exactly can they have an issue that can affect a huge swath of their customers across countries? Insight appreciated.

Because, maybe, like in every big company, the thing actually doing the work is some old oracle database with some huge monolithic around it...

Out of all the companies Google might be relying on in their back-end, I think Oracle is probably pretty far down the list.

Re: Gmail having issues

#105

Post by noemit »

Jap2-0 wrote: post #59
vlovich123 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing all the work twice is expensive. It’s not just the actual work of doing the design, but then you’re 2x testing costs too (unless you YOLO one of the modalities). More cost effective and better quality result to make a choice to make the platforms more uniform rather than trying to optimize for both. This obviously only holds when there’s a massive disparity in revenue. If your PC/laptop users make up a non-triv…

> Doing all the work twice is expensive. Sure, but they already do all the work twice . I get a completely different site on my phone than on a desktop/laptop. In fact, they maintain far more than two designs - in addition to two native apps, there's a mobile website, the desktop website, and the basic HTML version. On top of that, they have multiple display density options for desktop (which admittedly is mostly jus…

They don't. The browser just adapts.

Re: Gmail having issues

#106

Post by pmlnr »

Uehreka wrote: post #95
systemvoltage wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I get that. But why punish the Desktop users with mobile interface? We used to punish Mobile users with Desktop interface back then, we just reversed the problem, didn't actually solve it. They should be 2 separate things. 2 separate css files with @media select. 2 separate button sizes and styles. I know what happened - designers got lazy.

No, designers did not get lazy. Devices got weirder. It used to be that you could check the width and height of the viewport and say something like “320px wide? Must be a touch interface, deploy the big buttons”. Then tablets got big and it was like “1024px? Could be a laptop, but it’s probably an iPad, which has a touch interface, deploy the big buttons”. Then laptops got touch screens, then the Surface Studio came…

Simple solution would be to ask the user what they want. I genuinely don't understand why this is not common instead of trying to guess it.

Re: Gmail having issues

#107

Post by Spooky23 »

firebaze wrote: post #47

As quite a few googlers appear to read and write on HN, I'd really welcome an insider info on what's going on the last few days. Sure there will be some internal turmoil going on right now, but isn't there some non-confidential info to share? Can't imagine this will hurt the image of google neither in the short nor long run, quite the opposite.

Uneducated speculation, some sort of security incident. Whenever there is a major security issue in the wild, one of the big providers tends to have a problem within a few days.

Re: Gmail having issues

#108

Post by pmlnr »

sonotmyname wrote: post #68
Spare_account wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the point, this page is readable and information-dense. There is no bloating

> this page is readable Not easily so on mobile - the need to zoom multiple times and scroll in 2 directions to read simple information is a PITA.

Because it's not for mobile. Engineers who look at this tend to work from a computer.

Re: Gmail having issues

#109

Post by WolfRazu »

belorn wrote: post #67
gabagool wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may be using the paid, enterprise G Suite/Google Workspace Gmail: https://workspace.google.com/products/gmail/ .

Can they call someone when there is an issue with gmail? Is there a contract that give them some leverage and guaranties? What is the process in the case of a missing business-critical email being lost and needing recovery? For business critical operation, leave such answers unanswered can be pretty risky.

Yes, Gsuite has a SLA and telephone support etc.

Re: Gmail having issues

#110

Post by throwaway201103 »

Zenst wrote: post #102
redwards510 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In lieu of an actual Googler, how about some educated speculation? It blows my mind that Google can even have problems like this. Aren't their apps highly distributed across tons of CDNs? Don't they have world class Devops people that roll out changes in a piecemeal fashion to check for bugs? How exactly can they have an issue that can affect a huge swath of their customers across countries? Insight appreciated.

I speculate that for many companies, work from home has been at most, less impacting than they thought. However, I'd speculate that in this instance, when you get that .0001% problem, less hands on deck makes work from home aspects less easier. Akin to remotely fixing somebodies PC over standing behind them. With that premise I'd speculate in this instance that whilst not the root cause, may of been a small ripple th…

You might be right for the smaller company where physical access to the machines in the data center is necessary at a certain point in the troubleshooting process. I work at such a place myself. I would guess, however, that Google moved beyond that quite some time ago. It's simply not practical, with or without having offices with people in them.
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