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  • Google further integrates Google+ into Gmail

    Google has started pushing its Google+ social networking service further into Gmail with new features that let users add to their circles directly from their email accounts.

  • Gmail back, except for a few heavy users

    Four days after an outage hit about 40,000 users of Google's Gmail service, most users are up and running once again, the company said Thursday.
    "The problem with Google Mail should be resolved," the company wrote on the Google Apps Status Dashboard early this morning. "We apologise for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support."
    However, the report noted that the problem, which first struck some users on Sunday, isn't fully fixed yet.
    "Gmail should be back to normal for the vast majority of people affected by this issue," the report on the dashboard continued. "If you are still experiencing an issue, please contact us at gmail-maintenance@google.com."
    A spokeswoman for Google declined to give a specific number of users who are still without Gmail service. However, she did note that most of those without access to Gmail tend to be users with "very large" inboxes.
    And that's bad news for the heaviest users of Gmail, who just might have the most to lose from the outage, analysts said.
    "The people with the biggest e-mail accounts are Gmail power users," said Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group. "They rely most on the service and probably have the most to lose if their data is gone. A days-long interruption in service is very bad for these folks."
    And while Google has said they're able to restore data that had been inaccessible, it's not clear if all of the e-mails will be returned to every Gmail user.
    "At this point, it sounds like Google can restore user data. But we don't know how current those back-ups are," Olds said. "It's possible that they don't cover the last hours or more of user activity. Days of downtime plus lost data? That's not adding insult to injury. It's adding more injury to injury."
    The problem started on Sunday when many users began complaining that they were missing key parts of their Gmail service, including e-mail, chat histories, contacts, folders and settings. And some reported that their accounts seemed to have been reset and appeared brand new.
    Google reported on Monday that the outage was caused by a bug in a storage software update. The company also said on Monday that the service would be back up and running by Monday night.
    That wasn't the case.
    Early Wednesday afternoon, Google reported that engineers were still working on the issue and service has been restored for "some users."

  • Google apologizes for Gmail bug that shook 150,000 users

    Google says it is "very sorry" for a Gmail software bug that reset some 150,000 accounts and left their owners contemplating the prospect of having lost years worth of data. The outage affected only a fraction of one per cent of Gmail users, but its severity was particularly noteworthy.

  • AAPT completes move to Gmail

    AAPT has switched the remainder of its 1200 staff off Microsoft's Exchange collaboration platform and onto Google's rival Gmail offering, after running a trial of 250 staff on Gmail for the past two months.
    The company has already adopted some aspects of Google's online platform — specifically, the search giant's Google Video and Sites applications — and had flagged the Gmail move as "95 percent certain" in late April.
    “The decision for us to go Google was initially more of a challenge at the philosophical level — the idea of relinquishing ‘control’ — rather than the technical level,” said AAPT chief operating officer David Yuile.
    “The benefits of moving to Google Apps are significant — for individual users and for the company. We expect to reap considerable savings in IT costs, with minimal user support and much lower ongoing infrastructure costs,” he said.
    AAPT's shift has also unlocked the use of Google's Talk instant messaging application. Staff will receive 25GB of mailbox storage each on Google's servers.
    “This exciting move will help us address some of the challenges we face: information overload, changing business needs and new technology demands, such as increased mobility and flexible working,” Yuile said.
    The potential to shift to a cloud-based platform such as Gmail or Microsoft's hosted Exchange offering has been a hot topic on Australian chief information officers' minds this year. Some have already made the switch. But one aspect holding some back is the lack of dedicated datacentres based in Australia for the services.
    One large organisation earlier this year expressed how unlikely it was to ‘Go Google’.
    “If he imposes Google Docs on me, I’ll throw my laptop at him,” joked Telstra chief technology officer Hugh Bradlow, earlier this year, referring to then-Telstra CIO, John McInerney.
    In New Zealand, several organisations, including NZ Post, the Univeristy of Auckland and, more recently, Tait Electronics have switched from Microsoft to Google for email and other services.
    - Additional reporting by David Watson

  • Gmail, Yahoo Mail join Hotmail; passwords exposed

    Google's Gmail and Yahoo's Mail were also targeted by a large-scale phishing attack, perhaps the same one that harvested at least 10,000 passwords from Microsoft's Windows Live Hotmail, according to a report by the BBC.

  • Gmail suffers widespread outage

    Google's Gmail e-mail service is currently down for a majority of its tens of millions of users, the company acknowledged Tuesday afternoon.

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