PUBLIC MARKS with tags gfail & gmail

Unexpected side effects of some new code that tries to keep data geographically close to its owner caused another data center in Europe to become overloaded, and that caused cascading problems from one data center to another. It took us about an hour to get it all back under control.

It’s bad enough for Google that businesses and consumers across the globe are being left without web access to Gmail for hours, but to add insult to injury someone hacked the created a Google Groups page on Gmail (link NSFW) at the worst possible time, adding images that leave nothing to the imagination as well links to adult content elsewhere on the net on top of the page.

Comme souvent, avant les premières réactions officielles de Google et les articles épouvantés de blogs et sites d’informations comme celui que vous lisez actuellement, les indicateurs du séisme se trouvent sur les réseaux sociaux. Sur Facebook, par exemple, les statuts ne tardent pas à relater le bug de Gmail, à coup de « rendez-moi Gmail » et autre lamentations laconiques. C’est véritablement sur Twitter que l’ampleur du phénomène se révèle.

Thousands of Twitter messages carrying the words “gmail” or “gfail” will teach you that Google’s free web-based e-mail platform is currently down around the world. A Google spokesperson told Pocket Lint that their engineers are working on it but have no clue why the errors are turning up.