Yesterday saw Google run in to problems with its Gmail service. It was thought that around 40,000 users were effected in that all emails, contacts etc… were lost. When a select group of users logged in yesterday, they were greeted with nothing at all which wasn’t good.
However, Google [GOOG] has now confirmed that no data has been lost and that they have managed to restore a good number of accounts back to where they were.
I know what some of you are thinking: how could this happen if we have multiple copies of your data, in multiple data centers? Well, in some rare instances software bugs can affect several copies of the data. That’s what happened here. Some copies of mail were deleted, and we’ve been hard at work over the last 30 hours getting it back for the people affected by this issue.
The reason the process is taking hours is due to using off site backup tapes to keep data safe. Had the data in multiple datacentres not been corrupted, the backups would have been restored near instantly. But, tape is a lot slower. On the positive side, at least Google has a backup of data.
For those worried about losing email sent to them on the 28th February, Google indicates that any email received will have bounced and will be tried at a later time.
Another update that came in about 40 minutes ago indicates that all data is now restored:
10:57 PM
The problem with Google Mail should be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better. If you are still experiencing an issue, please contact us via the Google Help Center.
I have problem signing into my gmail. Upon siging in I receive reply for connection problem. This happen since Feb. 28, 2011 till to date.
You could try clearing your browser or perhaps trying a different browser to rule out a problem there.