Google has issued an update on the recent Gmail snafu saying that it has successfully begun restoring data from offline tape backups and promising to get everyone back to normal soon. The company explained in a blog post that while it maintains several electronic copies of every email sent through its system, this particular glitch destroyed every electronic copy of affected emails, and getting them from tape backups is what makes the process take so long.

Google also reduced its estimate of affected users from 0.08% to 0.02%, which is a relatively small number, but given the service's millions of users it still means some tens of thousands were affected. The company is expected to provide credit to affected business customers as per the terms of its service level agreement.

As usual, the Internet giant is posting a detailed incident report outlining the corrective actions being taken to help fix the issues and prevent it from occurring again at the Apps Status Dashboard.