Gmail was down • Hacker News Board

Re: Gmail was down

#301

Post by jader201 » Fri, Jan 24, 2014, 7:42 PM UTC

spyder wrote: post #276

pkfrank wrote: post #170

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.

The most painful thing is to change your e-mail in the services where you used it for sign up. The data export doesn't look hard: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/google...

This is exactly why I've abstracted my Gmail accounts behind my own personal domain. If Gmail starts charging/gets shut down/I get tired of it, I can switch over to another email provider that supports custom MX domains.

I (almost [1]) never use my actual Gmail address.

[1] The only time I use it is for Google services (i.e. Adsense) that require a Gmail account.

Re: Gmail was down

#302

Post by obliojoe » Fri, Jan 24, 2014, 7:42 PM UTC

It is up for me now, except that I am unable to add any attachments to emails.

Re: Gmail was down

#303

Post by sheetjs » Fri, Jan 24, 2014, 7:42 PM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #285

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Who?

Wikipedia credits Paul Buchheit:

> The idea for Gmail was pitched by Rajen Sheth during an interview with Google,[55] and went on to be developed by Paul Buchheit several years before it was announced to the public. Initially the email client was available for use only by Google employees internally. Google announced Gmail to the public on April 1, 2004.

Re: Gmail was down

#304

Post by babuskov » Fri, Jan 24, 2014, 7:42 PM UTC

dsilver wrote: post #122

Of all things, this happens as Google's Site Reliability Engineering team starts an AMA on Reddit[1]. [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1w1y5m/we_are_the_goog...

Apparently, not the team responsible for GMail.

Re: Gmail was down

#305

Post by gus_massa » Fri, Jan 24, 2014, 7:42 PM UTC

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #244

JohnBooty wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you don’t have Paul Buchheit in your list of programming gods, your list must be very short. Anyway, probably the fist version sucked and he used a lot of internal libraries.

Re: Gmail was down

#306

Post by RRRA » Fri, Jan 24, 2014, 7:43 PM UTC

RRRA wrote: post #299

senorsmile wrote: post #268

Was back for a minute, back down again.

Same here, it seems it just came back up for a 2nd time ...

Scratch that, very intermittent up/down. . . mostly down!

Re: Gmail was down

#307

Post by jonli1 » Fri, Jan 24, 2014, 7:43 PM UTC

up but flaky...

Re: Gmail was down

#308

Post by k0n2ad » Fri, Jan 24, 2014, 7:44 PM UTC

avolcano wrote: post #56

Google Plus is down. I don't think anyone's noticed yet.

I chuckled

Re: Gmail was down

#309

Post by btilly » Fri, Jan 24, 2014, 7:44 PM UTC

TrainedMonkey wrote: post #282

simonsarris wrote: post #42

Very funny that me and my coworkers at nearly the same time opened our office doors to look into each others eyes and silently confirm that we were having the same issue. Then we all turned around and went back into our offices to check HN to see if it was just us. Very funny that everyone reading this did something similar. 84 points in 4 minutes.

The intensity and speed this thread rose up on HN illustrates a very important principle. People are more likely to leave a review/comment/upvote if something is not working for them. Understanding that is useful when comparing products using reviews.

This is a very important principle.

For a time, Target used Amazon's website code. Here is what they found. People leave reviews of books that they like. People only bother reviewing microwave machines when they didn't work.

This meant that Amazon's code didn't work out as well for Target as it did for Amazon...

Re: Gmail was down

#310

Post by aryastark » Fri, Jan 24, 2014, 7:44 PM UTC

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #244

JohnBooty wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My brain hurts from contemplating what you wrote.

The point of gmail is that they take the configuration and headache of maintaining a mail server away from you. If you're okay with running your own qmail/sendmail, then there are vastly better open source UI options than gmail. Google didn't invent email. They just run some of the world's largest mail servers as a (mostly) free service.