Gmail has been down for me for almost 12 hours now. And it’s only my main account. Seems like there is a documented issue, which is good to hear, but still not fixed. According to the Google Groups Gmail discussion board, they are working on the issue:

Update: our engineers have identified the source of the problem and are working to restore account access as quickly as possible. We know how important email is to our customers, and we are taking this very seriously. We apologize for this inconvenience, and we will provide updates as new information becomes available.

This makes somewhat glad about using my own domain for my email. Right now, any email you send me gets forwarded to my gmail account. However, if this gmail situation doesn’t get fixed, it’s a quick switch with my domain registrar to have my email forwarded somewhere else – either another gmail account, my own hosted webmail, or another email provider altogether.

**Update Update**

Google just updated the 502 error message, with more familar Gmail branding, and a very slightly more reassuring error message.

Update 2* – And… we’re back! Luckily gmail didn’t lose any messages. But those few hours were intense – also kind of nice.. like a vacation.

Update 3* – 2008-08-11 – Gmail is back down, but now it seems to be down for many more people. It’s down for me, too. Luckily, I’m still doing just fine with email. My email address is at a domain I own. I simply have it all forwarded to my gmail account, so I can use the great gmail interface and services – imap, etc etc. However, during the latest gmail outage, i fiddled with some settings on my webhost, and set it up to not only continue to forward to my gmail acct, as it has been, but to also use a locally hosted email box. So, for now, since gmail is down, I’m seamlessly switching over to my own hosted email box. Victory!