Gmail outage locks some users out of e-mail

Google was still working to restore access to its Gmail e-mail service to a handful of customers on Monday, a day after an outage prevented a few users from accessing their e-mails. A message posted to the Google Apps status page at 10:40pm Eastern Sunday said engineers were "working to restore full access," and full access would be restored in the "near future."

No update had been provided as to if the issue had been fully resolved, although the company noted the issue affected only .08% of the total Gmail user base.

Those struck by the outage noted that messages, chat histories, and contacts appeared to be missing. In some cases, the accounts appeared as if they had been wiped. The problem first appeared around 3:09pm Sunday afternoon according to Google.

Google's Gmail is used by about 170 million users worldwide. Based on the numbers given about 136,000 users are thought to be affected, although that number has not been officially confirmed. It is unclear as to how many may still be experiencing issues, if any.

Another consideration is Google's recently announced changes to its service agreements regarding uptime, announced last month. Google was not responding to requests for comment if this outage would fall under their guarantee, and whether any customers may be eligible for credits.

Users posting to Google's official support threads expressed frustration and concern with the downtime. "Google has been in the forefront of encouraging people to store their data and applications in 'the cloud,' touting the security of this approach versus the now old-fashioned local hard drive," one user lamented.

"Well--what if the cloud fails?"