Should Gmail be held to a higher reliability standard?
How much downtime is ok for cloud-based e-mail?
By Google Subnet on Thu, 09/24/09 - 4:08pm.
When Google contacts crashed yesterday, it created Google's second high-profile outage this month. It took out Gmail and Gtalk, Google's chat service, that relies on contacts. The Gmail problem comes on the heels of an hour-and-a-half Google News glitch Tuesday.
Most of us use the free version of Gmail and most of us rely on it. Does Gmail, and its attendant services, crash more than do similar services offered by corporate networks? If so, should Google be held to a higher standard, even for freeware?
I've of a mind to say, no. That if you don't pay for it and you have to do without it for a few hours during a workday every few weeks, that this is a fair trade. Many other freebie e-mail systems are available to you, should you want to walk with your feet, or have a backup for those days when Google splutters.
Do you agree or disagree?
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You get what you pay for
ANd free is my favorite flavor - but you have to expect to get what you pay for - pay nothing, you deserve nothing except PERHAPs that something MAY work. What, you wanna give YOUR work away for free? Let's see you go to work day in and day out and not collect a paycheck, and see how happy you are... I use GMail, but if it goes out, it goes out. I didn't pay for it, therefore I have no reasonable right to expect 100% uptime. That's why anyone with half a brain uses a backup email account or two. DUH.
It wouldn't matter if you
It wouldn't matter if you were paying for it. If they make no claims to reliability then where are you getting expectations from?
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