Gmail Outage Means Unprecedented Googling

By Will McCahill, Newser Staff

Posted Sep 1, 2009 7:59 PM CDT

(Newser) – The outage affecting Google’s email service today sent millions to its search function, Jennifer Van Grove writes on Mashable—with so many looking for an explanation that, for a time, Gmail-related topics were 18 of the top 20 US queries. “The frenzy of Google searches on its status certainly proves how widespread the outage was,” Van Grove notes, “and how many millions of people were affected. We’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

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Google status page. (Wikimedia Commons)

The error message that alerted users to today's Gmail issues. (Wikimedia Commons)

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At the very least, now we know that Gmail extends well beyond the social media realm in terms of users and influence. - Jennifer Van Grove

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