Google pulls Personalized Home Page service out of the fire

All seems to be well – or at least getting much better – in the land of Google Personalized Home Page service early this morning as users from around the world report that their settings that were gone and feared lost yesterday have magically reappeared. The problem, the origin of which remains unexplained, had users of the service fuming for much of Thursday and Google personnel “frantic” over finding a fix. This morning, we read on a Google discussion board mainly expressions of relief: “Awesome :) Worx again! Thx to all,” writes one user. And … “Mine is back as well," adds another. "Cheers Googlers. 17 hours from problem to fix, pretty spiffy for a free service.” Not all corners of the globe were reporting restored settings. And, of course, no good deed goes unpunished, so there are dissenting voices. “Well!" huffs one user. "I am happy for all of you who had lost so much stuff but nevertheless, me, as I could remember most of the gadgets I had installed only a few days ago, I still spent about 2 hours to retrieve them from the Google directory and REDOING my Google homepage. ... and now, this morning, I have got the great surprise that the old one has been restored! I AM SORRY BUT IF GOOGLE COULD HAVE BEEN A LITTLE MORE PROFESSIONAL BY WARNING US THAT WE WOULD GET OUR HOMEPAGE BACK, BECAUSE IT WOULD HAVE SAVED ME OF MY TIME ! and no! I can't believe that I'd be the ONLY ONE who did restore my homepage before Google finally did it!” Oh, stop whining. Much to Google’s credit, the company did keep users informed throughout the troubles -- a courtesy RIM never gave its BlackBerry clients -- and clearly stated that they did not know whether the settings could be restored, meaning, of course, that they might be. On the other hand, some users took the episode as a learning experience: "Hurrah! Mine is back too ... just this minute," writes this person. "What a relief. … normality has been restored. A new lesson in life to not rely on pages over which, ultimately, I have no control!"