Google Apologizes for Gmail Slowness

Basically: "Sorry. But it wasn't that bad. But we'll also try harder."

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If you’re like me, you weren’t getting your Gmail messages on time yesterday. To that end, Google has apologized, saying “we realize that our users rely on Gmail to be always available and always fast, and for several hours we didn’t deliver.”

The company also offered a postmortem of sorts detailing what happened. Spoiler: It was “a very rare event in which two separate, redundant network paths both stop working at the same time.”

Google contends that the delays were minor, stating “71% of messages had no delay, and of the remaining 29%, the average delivery delay was just 2.6 seconds. However, about 1.5% of messages were delayed more than two hours.”

I’d like to personally apologize to all the people I yelled at via e-mail yesterday for not returning my messages in a timely manner. I realize that you rely on me to be always courteous and always not an a-hole. For several hours yesterday, I didn’t deliver.

The reason for my craptitude was a very rare event in which two separate, noteworthy events happened: a) it was Monday and b) all the coffee in Boston was secretly decaffeinated by Lucifer himself. I should know because I drank most of it and it proved totally ineffective. Note to self (unrelated): the Pumpkin Spice K-Cups in TIME’s Boston office expired two Halloweens ago. Doug, stop drinking the Pumpkin Spice. It tastes like liquefied ashes. Just try another flavor that hasn’t expired.

More On Gmail’s Delivery Delays [Google Blog]