Google Downtime Explained

The other day my Gmail account was having some issues and I wasn’t able to access it. Apparently this issue affected “the majority of users” and many people are probably asking, “why did this happen?” I just thought that since I had the opportunity, I’d offer a brief explanation here of what exactly happened.

When I tried to load my GMail homepage, the page I kept getting delivered to instead said Temporary Error (500).

screen shot showing Temporary Error (500)

Since they offered to show me the technical info, I went ahead and clicked on the link. I too was curious about what could be causing this little hiccup.   Alas, despite their apparent willingness to share the details, it seems they still won’t be offering up much in the way of technical secrets.

screen shot showing Temporary Error (500)

Numeric Code: 5

That’s all they told me.  I suppose I ought to say thank you to the technical geniuses over at Google for sparing me an overwhelming amount of technical detail.  Perhaps I could not have handled the real info? Or, perhaps it was such a simple problem that this knowledge was the source of the problem and I am just too uneducated to grasp it?

Either way, I wanted to bring it to you, good readers of chickenmonkeydog.  Now you know!

3 comments

  1. A Google search for “Numeric Code: 5” didn’t turn up anything in terms of GMail help, just chat forums, and this site.

  2. Oh yeah, numeric code:5, now it makes so much sense! This is what we work on all day long in web firms. Conall, I can tell you but I will have to kill you.

  3. @ Magnus

    Welcome to chickenmonkeydog and thanks for commenting. Don’t worry, I won’t pressure you to reveal the depth of technical detail that hides behind the cryptic “Numeric code: 5”. I value my life to highly for that!

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