Gmail hit by message delivery delays, close to 50 percent of users affected

A bug bit Gmail Monday and almost half of the webmail service’s users are experiencing email delivery delays and problems downloading attachments.

Google first acknowledged the problem shortly before 7:30 a.m. PDT and has been wrestling with it ever since, according to information on the Google Apps Status page.

In an update posted at around 2 p.m. PDT, the company disclosed that “less than 50 percent” of users had been impacted, which can safely be assumed to mean that at least 49 percent of users got hit.

Gmail has more than 425 million active users.

The Google Docs word-processing application and Presentation slide-creation application have also been experiencing a disruption during the same timeframe, but the company hasn’t disclosed the nature of that problem and the scope of users impacted.

In the latest update, posted at 1 p.m. PDT, Google said Gmail service had been restored "for most affected users" and that it expects to have the problem solved for everyone affected by 4 p.m. PDT. That's three hours longer than the previous resolution estimate.

"We expect a small and declining number of messages to still be affected for the next 3 hours as the remaining delivery backlog is cleared. We are working on several options to accelerate the process and will provide more information when we have an updated time estimate," the note reads.

The Google Docs word processing application and Presentation slide creation application also had a service disruption that started about 7:30 a.m. PDT and lasted until 1 p.m. PDT. The company hasn't disclosed the nature of the problem that affected those cloud applications nor the scope of affected users.

The duration of the outage and the number of people affected make this incident a very significant one for Google, which is involved in a brutal fight with Microsoft in the market for enterprise cloud email and collaboration apps.

Monday's outage is affecting not only individuals who use Gmail for free but also businesses, schools, and government agencies that use it as part of the fee-based Google Apps suite, as evidenced by multiple Twitter posts and discussion forum threads.

Google Apps competes directly with Microsoft's Office 365, and the two rivals are constantly trumpeting customer wins and sniping at each other's product suites.

A Google spokeswoman declined to comment on the matter beyond what's been posted on the Apps Status site.

 Updated 9/23/2013 at 2:20 p.m. PDT 

Juan Carlos Perez covers e-commerce, Google, web-application development, and cloud applications for the IDG News Service.
More by Juan Carlos Perez

View the original article here

US to release annual figures on spying orders and people affected

The U.S. government has decided to release data annually on its secret spy orders and the number of people affected by them, the country's intelligence chief said Thursday.

The government will release the total number of orders issued during the prior 12-month period, and the number of targets affected by the orders, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper said in a statement on "IC on the record," the DNI's page on Tumblr.

The disclosures will be broken down under certain categories such as data requests under the business records provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and National Security Letters issued by the government, he added.

The move follows demands by lawmakers, rights groups and Internet companies that the government should release more information on the secret collection of data from telephone and Internet companies by the National Security Agency.

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed through newspapers certain documents that suggested that the government had real-time access to content on servers of some Internet companies, under a surveillance program called Prism. The companies have denied their participation in the NSA program. The Guardian newspaper in the U.K. also published in June a copy of an order to Verizon by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in Washington, D.C., which required Verizon to provide call records or "telephony metadata" of its customers to the NSA on an ongoing daily basis.

Most of these data requests have been in the form of "gag orders," which prohibit the recipients of data request orders from discussing them in public. Microsoft and Google have asked FISC to allow them to disclose aggregate numbers on FISA and related data requests by the government, but the U.S. Department of Justice has postponed replying to the pleas six times so far.

Internet companies like Facebook, Yahoo, Apple and Microsoft have so far released aggregate figures for data requests from the government, but didn't say how many were related to national security. The companies said they could not break out requests under FISA, because those figures were classified.(

"Our ability to discuss these activities is limited by our need to protect intelligence sources and methods," Clapper said in the statement.

He described FISA and national security letters as an "important part of our effort to keep the nation and its citizens safe." Disclosing more detailed information about how they are used and to whom they are directed can help enemies avoid detection, he added.

Following criticism of the NSA surveillance program, President Barack Obama said earlier this month that his administration will appoint an independent board to review the country's surveillance programs, and also add a privacy advocate to defend privacy in the FISA court when agencies ask the court for new surveillance orders. Obama also said he will work with the U.S. Congress to limit data collection by the NSA under the Patriot Act.

John Ribeiro covers outsourcing and general technology breaking news from India for The IDG News Service. Follow John on Twitter at @Johnribeiro. John's e-mail address is john_ribeiro@idg.com

John Ribeiro covers outsourcing and general technology breaking news from India for The IDG News Service.
More by John Ribeiro, IDG News Service

View the original article here