Gmail crashes for the third time this year

Gmail has crashed again today, continuing its recent trend of unscheduled downtime.

It began about 11am today affecting users from all over the world. The problem has since been fixed.

A Google spokesperson told IT PRO: "A number of our users had difficulty accessing Gmail this morning. The problem was immediately investigated, and service was restored within twenty minutes."

"We know how important Gmail is to our users, so we take issues like this very seriously, and we apologise for the inconvenience."

This is the third crash of Gmail this year. One in February lasted several hours and took out the service across Europe, whereas one in January was blamed on human error.

Rob Lovell, chief executive of ThinkGrid believes this crash shows the risk in using the free email service. He said: "IT support must be quick and accessible. Google's one business day SLA leaves too much room for error. In the current climate this can spell disaster."

He added: "Quite simply the fact is that the level of support and SLAs provided by Google means that Gmail and other services are too risky for business use. Organisations should be looking to Cloud providers who can provide far tighter SLAs and support."