Double trouble: Notes flames, Gmail disappears

Today my Notes client crashed - no surprise there. But when I went to use my Gmail account as a backup I found to my surprise that it has completely disappeared. My Google account still exists, but Google doesn't think I have Gmail set up yet. Instead I see this sign up screen:

As someone who has used Gmail for years - and never backed up the e-mail history - that's a little scary.

Some days you just can't trust the cloud.

As for Notes, I've never liked the implementation on my work machine. My installation of Lotus Notes has always been chronically slow and crash prone, especially if I try to use the search function in the client. That's what took me down today:

My machine needs to be rebooted before I can run Notes again - a process that takes about 10 minutes including restarting all of my applications, the VPN, etc. But the rest of my apps were still running fine. I decided to finish up what I was doing and just slide into my Gmail account.

I was so wrong.

Instead of seeing my Gmail account I was presented with the  screen above.

I'm not sure what's wrong, but I did run into this Temporary Error 502 explanation in Google's Gmail help group.

"We're aware of a problem with Gmail affecting a small subset of users. The affected users are unable to access Gmail. We will provide an update by March 10, 2009 04:30:00 AM PST detailing when we expect to resolve the problem. Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change."

But is this my problem? In my case I'm not seeing a 502 error at all. My account simply appears to no longer exist. So I am holding my breath and waiting to see what happens.

While Gmail has never failed me before, this is clearly not the first time other users have had their service interrupted. If you read through the Gmail help discussion history you'll find that the same problem cropped up at regular intervals: Feb 24, Feb 11, Feb 10, Dec 2, Oct 15, Oct 9, Aug 11, Aug 6 and on and on.

I still prefer the fast, simple, easily searchable Gmail interface over Notes any day of the week. But I'm no longer sure about the reliability of the Gmail's service, not to mention the integrity of the data I had in that account. At least with Notes I can reboot. Worst case I can call my internal IT support group and they'll get right on the problem. And I know where the backups are.

With Gmail who do you call if the account never comes back? Has several years of e-mail history been wiped out without a trace? I can't do business like this.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go reboot my machine.

5:28 P.M. Gmail may have been down, but that wasn't the sourc of my Gmail problem. See the blog update for details.