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When I try logging into Gmail, I either get the “Oops. Temporarily unavailable. Error 767 (or 766)” message, or I get the “Server error” message. It gets as far as the “Loading…” bar on top, but that’s the farthest I’ve gotten. Even on the customized Google Home Page, the Gmail section just says that the “Information is temporarily unavailable.”
On a related note, Google Talk logs me in but does not show any of my contacts. So, for all practical purposes, I cannot access my Gmail nor use Google Talk. I did file a bug/error report with Google, but I’m still keeping my fingers crossed.

We hardly ever realize our dependence on these things, until they come to bite us in the ass.

There only seem to be a handful of people for whom this has been a problem, at this point. If you think you are one of them, feel free to share your thoughts.

Update 1: I just received the following mail from Google:

Hello,

Thank you for your report.

We are aware of this problem, and our engineers are working diligently to find a solution. We apologize for any inconvenience this issue may have caused.

Sincerely,

The Google Team

I’m guessing that this is a good sign and can only hope that they get this fixed soon.

Update 2: Digg would seem to indicate that there are at least two other posts (other than mine) with this problem. There is also some discussion on Google groups on this topic.

Update 3: A little more than an hour ago, Google posted an official response on the Gmail Help Discussion forums:

Hi all,

We are aware of the issues a small sub-set of our users are
experiencing when logging in and sending messages. Rest assured that
our engineering team is working diligently to resolve these errors. We
appreciate your patience.

Please refer back to this thread for updates as they become available.

Thanks,
Gmail Guide

It would also seem that the forums are full of people with similar complaints — while I do understand Google’s position on things (it is, after all, still in beta), this cannot be good for their Google Apps release. I also noticed some comments from folks saying that the trial subscription of the Premium Edition of Google Apps was down for over 3 hours. Definitely not a good thing.

Update 4: It turns out that POP3 access is also down. However, I read on the forums that users who have their Gmail emails being forwarded to alternate addresses seem to get some emails (but not all). They’ve surmised (and I agree) that this could be because of the SMTP server being unable to complete some of the transactions. Others have also mentioned that it worked for them momentarily, during which they could see their old mails and some new ones. In some ways, this is quite reassuring.

Some folks have also mentioned that Gmail was back for them after an outage. I do not know if all their mails etc. were intact.

Update 5: Here is the latest update from Google (~2:30 PM EST):

Our engineers are continuing to work on this problem and we expect to have it resolved within a matter of hours. We expect users will have full access to their accounts and mail once the problem is resolved; some messages, however, may be delayed.

Thanks,
Gmail Guide

Well, keep your fingers crossed, people!

Update 6: Gmail seems to be back!

Gmail seems to be back, but it’s quite slow and I still get an error every once in a while, but I did see all my old mails and some new emails. However, not all new emails seem to be there, but I’d imagine that this is mostly due to the delays that the Google team was talking about. And oh, Google Talk also seems to work now. Now, forgive me while I knock on wood and hope that things stay this way.

Alright, that was a little premature — it’s down again, but now that I have seen my inbox, I am a little more hopeful that this will be fixed. Has anyone else seen any progress?

Update 7: Well, it’s been more than a day and looks like everything’s finally back up and running. Whew.

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