Users of Gmail today were beset by problems, following a service outage of the popular webmail service. Affecting nearly all aspects of Gmail, people relying on the web client, mobile clients, and standard email clients have all found themselves unable to retrieve or read messages.

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What outage? I've been able to access my G-mail account fine. No problems on Monday either...

Like any other mail hosting service has 100% uptime. A former employed used appliedi.net and had outages all the time!

It would be cool if google sold a gmail/docs/apps appliance, though, for enterprises that want email etc behind the firewall.

Gmail didn't work for me when right after I got home from school, about 4 hours ago, but it has worked ever since just fine. I just got on Gmail and read a few emails before reading this.

I havent noticed any problems .. and i acces my gmail seceral times a day .. all the time all hours of the day.. ... strange... only some countries affected?

I believe this article should be corrected as far as listing standard mail clients as also being a problem. Except for TechSpot, I have not seen a single reference on other sites referring to Gmail access with a mail client as a problem. Most other sites actually mention using a mail client when Gmail's web access is hosed. Previous Gmail outages have also been solved by using a mail client like Thunderbird, Outlook, or Apple Mail, etc.

I've been sitting here on and off for about 10 hours and haven't noticed any issues myself.

Hmm...
I haven't noticed any problems either, but then, it's not like I'm sending/receiving emails every 5 minutes.
I have 3 accounts, and access them with M$ Outlook POP3/SMTP.

Anyway, I actually did notice the outage. It was probably around 3:30 or 4:00 Eastern Time, and I could not refresh my inbox. It lasted half an hour at most, so it really was not a biggie.

well this is what we have Offline Gmail for
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/new-in-labs-offline-gmail.html
every mail provider can have downtime just ask any isp ;)

and google is pushing all these web only apps? I don't think so google. I'm done with gmail...NEXT

Out/downtime, call it whatever you like, is indeed an inconvenience for most in this time and age. However, considering that it's a free service (as far as I know Google charges 0.00$ to let us have a GMAIL account and the other services) I don't think there's room to complain. If you pay for the service, then you are entitled to a complaint IMHO.

I have downtime with my ISP, caused by problems with the telecom company that rents out the bandwidth etc. I'd still say that GMAIL as an excellent record considering the amount of accounts (in the millions?) that are active.