Image via CrunchBase

After the recent Gmail outage for several hours, internet is filled with uproar over the downtime and, as expected, the fear mongers with special interests in the failure of Cloud Computing are using the opportunity to whip up confusion in the minds of users. Wow, it appeared more like the opportunistic hyenas waiting to attack, as it was shown in the movie The Lion King.

Tuesday’s Gmail outage was 6th in the past 8 months. In case if you are interested, PC World has the timeline of Gmail downtimes. Actually, such frequent outages doesn’t bode well for the company as well as for the concept of serving software through the clouds. However, if one takes a hard look at the data, Gmail’s uptime is still much better than many On Premise Hosted email systems like Exchange. This is not an excuse for the outage and it is also very important that Google strives to offer 100% uptime of their services. At the same time, it is important for users to take a hard look into the data available and understand that Email on the Clouds is still a better option than the On Premise Hosted Email.

The beauty of Cloud Computing is that it offers more choices to the users than the traditional computing environment. The so called Gmail outage is, actually, the lack of access to Gmail using the web browser. In fact, email was available to the users either through offline access (akin to having email stored in the desktop PC) and also through Imap available in the desktop email clients like Outlook, Thunderbird etc. and also in the email clients available on mobile phones like Iphone. Any portrayal of users being completely cut out of their email is either very simplistic or downright nonsense.

Most of the media outlets were responsible in their reporting of this outage. It was flashed along with other important news items in the world and there were also some analysis/opinions about the uproar against the outage. This is pretty normal and, in fact, such negative exposures will keep Google on the leash and will ensure better uptime in the future. But I found one irresponsible article in one of the Indian newspapers. The article borders along plain naiveté to downright stupid. It was published in both the print as well as the online editions of The Economic Times. The author of the news article tries to spin Google’s explanation as a cover up and, also, tries to portray the outage as a failure of the cloud computing technology used by Gmail.

However, analysts say Google may be covering up its failure by terming it a “self-mistake”.
One indication of this is that since Google had put in place the ‘Captcha’ system, distorted letters that can only be recognised by humans to rectify the error, this would have been done only in the case of a botneck attack. An attack where thousands of zombie PCs controlled by group of mischief-makers were asked to access Gmail simultaneously, resulting in a crash of Gmail’s data centres.

If this is not enough, the article also quotes an analyst, who doesn’t want to identify himself/herself, talking emphatically about the failure of the technology.

“If it was a maintenance issue, they would know where the traffic load came from causing the crash. Why would they put in place Captcha if the problem was at their end,” said a Delhi-based analyst who did not want to be quoted. If it was really a code testing failure, they should have had the same side effects during their lab tests. Also, the response time to the problem should not have been four hours if it was an in-house cause, said the analyst.

Are we talking about President Obama’s Healthcare pick here? Why does an IT analyst, who talks about an important IT news of the day, wants to be anonymous while trying to trash a promising technology? Why can’t the analyst own up to his/her opinion about a topic in which he is supposed to be an expert? Why is this newspaper publishing some technology related information from the anonymous sources? If it is about a political news/gossip or about a news from terrorists/spy agencies, I can understand the importance of protecting the anonymity of journalistic sources. This is about a technology that is affecting the everyday lives of users and businesses. Their article is a case of pure irresponsible behavior. The consequences for such fear mongering tactics are great and any responsible news organization should not be indulging in such tactics. I just hope such things doesn’t happen in the future.

Update: Abi, in the comments section of this post, points out to something I missed when I wrote this post. The Economic Times is part of the Times of India Group that offers competing email product under the indiatimes.com brand. This, actually, reinforces my point about media irresponsibility.