Gmail down shock

Like a lot of people I have been using Gmail as my personal email account for some time now. I switched over when my laptop got stolen and I decided I would feel safer having all my email on a remote server rather than stored on a laptop that could be lost or snatched at any time!

After more than a year my Gmail account is a well-organised area containing a lot of very important information for me.

So when I - and millions of others - tried to log on to the service this morning, imagine my horror when I got this message:

Server Error

The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request.

Please try again in 30 seconds.

A quick search indicated that the problem is global and not just limited to the UK. I have already received emails from panicked freelancers who use Gmail not just for personal matters but also for business.

This is REALLY bad news for Google. They cannot afford to have outages like this and expect people to continue to use the service. If this happens again I for one will be seriously reconsidering my options.

I just checked again and Gmail is still down. It's now been down for well over an hour. Anyone out there know anything at all about this?? Google?? Help??