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Gmail was down

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Re: Gmail was down

#241

This actually raises a slightly terrifying reality. How much would someone have to pay you to never again recover your gMail account? I would demand just an absurd payout to willingly walk away right now, with all those contacts, messages, unread e-mails, organization, etc... Scary how much faith we put in this free service.

[deleted]

Re: Gmail was down

#243

This actually raises a slightly terrifying reality. How much would someone have to pay you to never again recover your gMail account? I would demand just an absurd payout to willingly walk away right now, with all those contacts, messages, unread e-mails, organization, etc... Scary how much faith we put in this free service.

Using Gmail is no reason to ignore the necessity of a local backup. I use CloudPull (OS X, payware).

And please note that Gmail is not free for everyone, there are many Google Apps users.

Re: Gmail was down

#244

Why is there no alternative webmail of the caliber of gmail? Is it a difficult problem? If there were such an alternative, all they would need to do is wait until gmail fouls up, as they did here. Then they'd have a flood of new users. I can imagine a few reasons why there currently isn't an alternative, like network effects stemming from your contact list, or the fact that you'd have to change your email address eve…

Why is there no alternative webmail of the caliber of gmail? Is it a difficult problem? Are you serious?

I'm old enough to remember that gmail was largely the creation of one person; a person who was neither a programming god nor business guru. It's tempting to think that we could sit down and make an open source gmail clone.

Re: Gmail was down

#246

This actually raises a slightly terrifying reality. How much would someone have to pay you to never again recover your gMail account? I would demand just an absurd payout to willingly walk away right now, with all those contacts, messages, unread e-mails, organization, etc... Scary how much faith we put in this free service.

Each one of us has the power to do something about it: Perform a Backup.

We should be downloading our mailbox with our contacts on a regular basis. I'm guilty for not doing this, but seems like an area that can use a SaaS.

Re: Gmail was down

#248
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cynic will say "karma whoring" but I think it's actually because it increases the likelihood that something will happen. For example, when there were coinbase issues, people wouldn't get responses for weeks. However, once a post about the delays hit the front page, the founders finally responded. So no, I'm not surprised this happened and I wouldn't be surprised to see a swift response

Do you seriously think upvotes on HN have any impact on Google's motivation to get Gmail back up?

In the specific case of google, clearly no. But I've seen cases, such as with coinbase, where a post on the front page of HN really did lead to action.

My summary: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6932224

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6929705

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5427985

Re: Gmail was down

#249
I'm surprised the status board isn't nearly instant when this type of thing happens. I wonder if it's a manually switch or if it's automatically triggered after a certain number of regions become unavailable.

Re: Gmail was down

#250

This actually raises a slightly terrifying reality. How much would someone have to pay you to never again recover your gMail account? I would demand just an absurd payout to willingly walk away right now, with all those contacts, messages, unread e-mails, organization, etc... Scary how much faith we put in this free service.

I could drop it without too much pain, honestly. It wouldn't cost that much for me to delete my gmail accounts. But I learned to own my data where it matters and not sweat the rest ages ago. (Stopped compulsively "hoarding")

the problem resides on big companies.

I use google apps for email, and it's almost impossible to backup all the mails..

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