Davey Winder
Tuesday, 12 August 2008 16:28
Business IT -
Networking
Page 1 of 3
It has not been the best 24 hours for anyone who mistakenly thought they were at the cutting edge of mobile email technology as Gmail and MobileMe both suffer service failures. However, the customer service response from Google and Apple could not have been more different...
Every now and then, most Gmail users will appreciate, you experience the
slightly longer than usual lag before your inbox loads in the browser.
Sometimes you get one of those annoying 'taking longer than expected,
try using a browser from 10 years ago' type messages which offer to let
you see a plain vanilla version of Gmail in order for it to load a
little more quickly.
Yesterday I, and thousands (possibly millions)
of others around the world were simply told to come back
later as
Gmail went off the air.
I found that trying again within a couple of minutes got me my Gmail
service, but it was erratic. Very erratic indeed. I could read my mail,
I could compose a message, but I could not send it.
Todd Jackson, a Gmail Product Manager, writing on the
official Gmail
blog said "We feel your pain, and we're
sorry." Apparently the problem was caused by a temporary outage in the
Gmail contacts system that prevented it from loading properly.
"We heard loud and clear today how much people care about their Gmail
accounts" Jackson said, adding "We followed all the emails to our
support team and user group, we fielded phone calls from Google Apps
customers and friends, and we saw the many Twitter posts."
It is good to know that people who can do something about your problems
are actually listening, are actually giving a damn. "We never take for
granted the commitment we've made to running an email service that you
can count on" Jackson says, and you know what I believe him.
So what happened when MobileMe went down, again? The customer service
response could not have been more different. Read page 2 to find out
why...
CONTINUES
LATEST HEADLINES FROM YOUR IT
