One reason I want nothing to do with the Google OS

[minstrel]

Looking forward to buying a netbook running the Google OS? Welcome to your future...

Gmail Outage: Google's Global Fail
by Seth H. Weintraub, Computerworld
Sep 1, 2009

Outages reported in United States, Europe and Asia; outage is affecting both Apps accounts and personal Gmail.

We are in the midst of a huge Google outage, it appears. I've got users in Europa and Asia that are also out.

I've also tried to log onto Gmail from servers in London, Spain and France without any luck.

The outage is affecting both Apps accounts and personal Gmail.

This one looks to be big . . . and global.

...more

[fitnfree]

It was caused by an Engineer error - there's an article on BBC News:

Engineer error knocks out Gmail

...engineers "slightly underestimated" the increased load put on other parts of the system during the upgrades, causing the "widespread outage" of its webmail.

Other ways of accessing the service - such as through desktop email programs - were unaffected, the firm said.

[minstrel]

OK.

But does it really matter what caused it? If your operating system, your software, and data are "in the cloud", sooner or later this will happen. Even if each time it happens it's a different issue, the fact remains that it's down and there's nothing you can do about it except wait.