I will admit that it is important, although the chaos that resulted after Gmail went down for an hour or so (for some, longer) last night was quite surreal. Thousands of tweets, widespread panic, and even an article to mark the occasion.

“productivity up of 20 million people” – Techcrunch

Though for many people, this quote is completely untrue. So many of us rely on Gmail. What do we do when it goes down? Should this make us think about having backups of our backups?
We all assume Google’s servers are safe for hundreds of years, but are they? Maybe they are, but sometimes things go wrong, even just for a short period of time. They tell us that although something has gone wrong, all our stuff is still safe – reassuring, but what if it wasn’t.

There wouldn’t be a lot we could do about it, we aren’t paying for anything after all, and mistakes do happen. Systems do go wrong.

But what if Twitter and Gmail were down at the same time??

Tagged: Gmail, Internet, Technology | 3 comments »