Google fixed its Gmail glitch, which suffered a 9-hour outage affecting message delivery and attachment download for all users.
Google, world's largest search engine, has finally resolved the 9-hour long outage of its Gmail ofr some users. The news came to light after several consumers reported problems in sending mails and downloading attachments and it was later confirmed by the parent company that the Gmail service was experiencing "an issue."
The first update from Google at 10.25 a.m. said that the web giant was investigating the issue that had affected less than 0.024 percent of all Gmail users. Although, the problem was reported for a small percentage of users, huge number of people and institutions were affected due to Gmail's large user-base. Google announced last summer that its email service had around 425 million active users.
Google constantly updated its App Status Dashboard throughout the outage period. Google released updates at 12:43 p.m., 1:45 p.m., 2:05 p.m., and 2:45 p.m. ET suggesting the problem was under investigation. Google said in its 2:05 p.m. update that the affected user-base had gone up to a whopping 50 percent.
Google finally resolved the issue at 3.00 p.m. ET, after announcing that the service was restored for some users, and it expected to fix the problem for all users within an hour. But the company failed to mention at the time which part of it's "less than 50% of Gmail users" had uninterrupted access to the email service.
Later, Google updated the Dashboard page at 4.00 p.m. ET, saying that the fix is expected to arrive for all users within the next 3 hours and later at 7.00 p.m. ET the web giant said it expects to resolve the issue for all users in the "near future."
Google's last update didn't sound promising but later at 10.00 p.m. ET, Google proudly announced that the "Gmail message delivery and attachment download is functioning normally for all users."
"We apologize for the duration of today's event; we're aware that prompt email delivery is an important part of the Gmail experience, and today's experience fell far short of our standards," Google said in its last update. "We have analyzed the data on user impact and are providing a preliminary assessment of what occurred between 0554 and 1530 Pacific Time today, 29.1% of messages received by Gmail users were delayed. The average (median) delay was just 2.6 seconds, but some mail was more severely delayed. However, this issue did not affect users' access to the Gmail page or other functionality."
