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Lost Gmail Emails and the Future of Web Apps
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Dec 29, 2006 12:26 PM
from the i-like-keeping-my-stuff-thanks dept.
from the i-like-keeping-my-stuff-thanks dept.
brajesh writes "Recently some people lost all their Gmail emails and contacts. The problem seems to be contained and fixed, but this incident shows how far are we in terms of moving all communication online on services like Gmail for your domain(beta). Will it ever be possible to do away with desktop solutions like Outlook and Thunderbird? Given the nature of the internet, will it ever be possible to truly move to an 'online desktop'?"
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Sure (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is not about 'potential'... (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope and expect the on-line desktop to be as successful as Java-station (or whatever it was called).
-m-
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Re:This is not about 'potential'... (Score:5, Insightful)
In your case you may "think" you're in control, when in fact your last backup copied over the same corrupted data, your archive DVD is now unreadable, and your last full offsite backup is two months old.
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Re:This is not about 'potential'... (Score:5, Insightful)
Please realize that my arguments against the 'google desktop' are not technical. And not even relate to that company's level of service (even though there is something to be said about it; but this is a beta, so no matter). They are on the level of perception, not the net result (and on a large scale). In a way this is similar to the 'airplane effect'. Everybody knows that overall air travel is way safer then driving. Still, plane crashes are way more publicized then car accidents. And great many people (including seasoned travelers) get an uneasy feeling boarding a plane, while getting into their cars every morning without giving risks they are taking any thought. Why so? I believe the root cause to be the perception of control. Or, as you preferred to call it, an 'illusion'.
-m-
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm having trouble resolving this comment with the topic of the thread, namely "Lost GMail Emails."
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Number of users for whom Google has lost email: >0
You forget, those people who run "enterprise" systems - they're just people who go home sometimes, and when they're home, they don't forget how to run a proper system. My mail servers are faster, though, and will remain that way until Google starts offering dedicated machines with gigabit connectivity to my workstation. Maybe you can't manage to figure out how to automate backups, and maybe you think that
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Failures/outages happen at home too, and when they happen (for most people, which don't maintain a backups) it's a lot more catastrophic than gmail (or other web service) being down for a little bit. So you had an unforeseen and untimely outage of your web-based email service, well, it could have just as easily have been an unforeseen and untimely failure of your PC. And I suspect it wo
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
So, let me get this straight - the first thing you'll want to have access to after a "world-society-ending" event is a encyclopedia of questionable accuracy, filled with mostly trivial information? I guess that's OK, though, since you'll be easier to defend against by those of us who will hoard food and weapons.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
A programmer or an administrator has the possibility of much more control over his or her email than a person dropping a scrap of paper in a steel box.
Of course, any idea of absolute control over anything is misguided and even a bit silly. You don't have absolute control over your own body. If you did, you'd never get sick. You probably don't have absolute control over you
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That's what I do. If Gmail loses my mail, then so be it, because while I have the convenience of an online email account, I also have the assurance of control and safety of my RAID5 desktop.
As far as security issues... if I care about Google bots reading a particular email, I'll use PGP.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I personally use Gmail for the interface and delete e-mail after it is 30 days or so old anyways as opposed to storing it (I'm much more worried about accidentally remaining logged in to Gmail on a school machine, exposing years of backups, than I am about Google's handling of my e-mail)
You can still do your own backups. (Score:5, Interesting)
Google rightly doesn't make any QoS promises, because it's giving you a free service. However, it's a pretty good bang for the (lack of) buck; and it doesn't preclude you from doing things to protect your data on your end. Until Google came along, I don't think most free webmail services let you have this level of desktop/web-service cooperation. (Though I think Yahoo's mail does POP access now. Not sure about Hotmail.)
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Re:Sure (Score:5, Insightful)
It sucks for the end user, but it means the company doesn't get sued out of business if they make one little mistake.
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Because no one has ever... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Because no one has ever... (Score:5, Funny)
If it's important, make a backup or twenty. Unfortunately this commandment was engraved on Moses' third tablet.
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Re:Because no one has ever... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Because no one has ever... (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact of the matter is that all hard drives fail at some point, and most RAID controllers eventually fail, too. Relying on a service to do backups for you is safer than no backups at all, but it's not sufficient if you have truly important data.
The "innate problem in web apps" is probably closer to reality than you want to admit - companies like Google, Yahoo, and MSN are fighting a battle in scalability. Having multiple redundant backup systems (array + offline backup) makes scaling much, much more expensive than designing a single fault-tolerant, semi-redundant primary system (large array of whatever kind).
If you think all of the massive online media sites (think Flickr, for example) have backups of all of your photos, you're probably mistaken. They certainly have basic protection against single disk failure, but that's not always going to save the data in the event of a catastrophe.
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But... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Never lose a local mailbox? (Score:2)
Because local mailbox file corruption never happens?
Simple answer: YES. (Score:5, Interesting)
I still use a POP3 e-mail app to download e-mails for archival purposes or to better format them for printing. I also use POP3 to get my e-mails to my cell phone/PDA (HPC Trinity P3600, best product ever) and it works fine.
I am ready to move to a virtual online desktop TODAY. Anything I need to backup I will -- everything else I'd rather pay someone else to host for me. While graphics design and high-data jobs require me to work locally, almost everything else works just fine remotely. I can see Wordpress evolving to the point that it could compete with Word locally, and I already use Google Spreadsheet for all my spreadsheet work (I've actually removed my office suite entirely as of last week).
As long as it works over my T-Mobile EDGE connection (bigger than a thin client), it is fine with me. Those days are quickly coming that I won't care what OS I am running as long as my browser is compatible with my online desktop.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
If you wanted better service, you'd just invest in either a better antenna, or a relationship with your neighbor so that they move the wireless router closer to you, or you'd spend money on the quality of service you require -- at a given cost.
Or he could invest in a can of Pringles potato chips and a few minutes of his time googling for directions on turning it into a decent antenna.
Basically grandparent post is all about ineptitude at thieving bandwidth. As with any other kind of thievery, the respon
well (Score:2, Interesting)
As to the contacts and emails being lost... Backup, backup, backup! GMail has an export feature.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Me neither. That's why I write all my email by hand.
It wasn't "lost," dammit (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It wasn't "lost," dammit (Score:5, Informative)
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see a need fill a need.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that is the direction that joe average wants the internet to go. He wants to upload and save all his pics to the net, have all his e-mails accessable via the web from anywhere. He wants his bills e-mailed to him and he wants his banking online. He also likes the idea of accessing his phone messages via his computer.
The traditional desktop was never by choice I dont think. It evolved this way because of technological limitations, lets be honest. If it were from pure design it would be no bigger than a note pad. So my point is yes it will be a reality it's just a matter of companies investing in gurantees. As opposed to just selling a hot service without really backing it up. This applies not only to e-mail but to online sales (security), storage services like flicker and utube (bandwidth and up time).
Back it up locally (link is google-cached) (Score:5, Informative)
You can use POP [64.233.187.104] (google cache link, the original seems to be missing) to back up your Gmail mail....Anyone have a alternate method that they use?
Reliability aside... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Reliability aside... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think the PC revolution moved us away from client/server -- it was the bandwidth/process/cost ratios that did. A PC with sneakernet provided better cost/efficiency ratios that did mainframe/terminal. As PC networks progressed, it really surpassed the server/terminal environment. But now we have extended the network beyond the office, and bandwidth is up, costs are down, so the focus today is on offering people access to their data from everywhere instead of just their hard drive.
I love client/server if it means having a really powerful server and a weak client. My PCs at home sit around doing nothing 80% of the day -- wasted hard drive space, wasted processor time, wasted hardware. Sure I can crunch some scientific equations on the PCs when they're dark, but all that technology could be better used if it was shared for others to use.
I would rather lease processor time/hard drive space to use as I needed -- in the amount I needed -- than worry about buying the latest and greatest every 6 months just to keep up. There are times when I have to RIP a 4GB print file on my most powerful PC and I wish I could get a cluster of machines to RIP it faster. For me, client/server in this case would make sense -- if I had 4-6Mbps of bandwidth to send the RIP'd info to my local printer. I _have_ RIPd big EPS files on a remote PC in the past and sent it via DSL to the printer (yes, 500Kbps was fast enough to keep the printer humming along).
For most people, leasing space/processors online would be cheaper -- and I think ISPs will move in that direction in the near future, as they already have in the recent past. Advertising-sponsored web servers are the norm lately, and I don't see why this won't make many happier. Google's apps are ad-sponsored and they work fine for me (and have even connected me with great online services through reading those ads on occasion).
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pwned? (Score:2)
mandelbr0t
Look on the brightside (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
duh (Score:2)
Probably for a while, but that's stupid. Server functions will migrate to your desktop. Many of us have already done this. The rest of you folks are called "Windows users".
Re:duh (Score:5, Insightful)
If you've got server functions running on your desktop, you don't have either a desktop or a server...
Parent
Yes. No. Maybe. (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely. But that doesn't necessarily make it a good (or bad) idea.
Personally, I don't like the idea of my entire digital "memoirs" being elsewhere where anything can happen to them. Now, it's not a rational fear -- Google has a datacenter, and I'm tapping this out on a five-year-old Athlon T-bird (newer HDs, however). But if something goes wrong here, I have full control. I know the routines for extracting data off of a dead drive. They've spent money to ensure that the likelihood of failure is much, much lower than my old little desktop, but if something goes wrong there, I have no control. Again, not a rational fear -- they're much more skilled than I am at recovering my data. But they're also not going to stay up until 3am just for old e-mails to my family from when I was a freshman in college.
I think one of the things I dislike about Web 2.0 most of all is the fact that all my data is elsewhere. There's a lot to be said for ownership and control. I have no problem with distributed applications, but I want my crucial data no more than 100 feet away.
I for one... (Score:5, Insightful)
(1) I don't want my personal data on another person or groups computer, especially without an option of having my own baackup of all my data. Even with the latter, I'd be leary, but the latter hasn't even happened yet in many cases, so I'm not expecting it to happen soon.
(2) An online storehouse like that would be a hackers dream. I'm not likely to have anything majorly secure on my system, but nonethelless, I'd rather remain a small unimportant target (my PC), than a large glowing beacon of temptation (remote server housing a lot of people's data).
(3) Occasionally ISPs have trouble. I've not seen this with my ISP yet, but I've known a lot of people who have had 4-24 hour downtimes. I don't want to loose access to my documents/data if that ever happens with my ISP.
(4) I don't have to deal with slower (compared to hard drive access) network connections and stressed servers making things slow when I'm using my computer.
(5) If I'm travelling around, and using my notebook, I don't want to have to worry about my documents not being available when I go somewhere that may not have internet access. Kein danke.
I understand 4 can be handled, and so can parts of 2, but I am really *not* keen on using an online desktop except for thnings that are naturally net-dependant anyway (such as email).
Two Things... (Score:4, Insightful)
Aside from that, though, I don't see that online will replace desktop in the foreseeable future -- there's too many things that are cumbersome to do online (like music and video editing) and way too many things that I wouldn't want in someone else's hands. The former might be fixed when we get consistent gigabit broadband (though maybe not if video quality and speed expectation continues to increase), but the latter, I don't know. There's certain things I create that I want to keep to myself.
Cheers.
If we don't define "online" as "not mine", yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure - As long as the server lives in my home office.
A decade ago I actually had such a setup for a few years, until my ISP decided to actually enforce the vague and arguably impossible "no servers" rule in their TOS. My email went to my home machine, which I could check by SSH'ing in from anywhere in the world. If I needed a file, I could tunnel in, mount a share off my home fileserver, and do whatever I wanted.
XP has actually made that more doable, in that Remote Desktop works pretty damned well even over slow connections. So now I have access to GUI-only information as well (yeah yeah, I used to do VNC or remote X desktops, but even over a broadband connection those crawl, and don't (directly) support sharing any non-GUI resources such as files, printers, and sound).
The problem here comes from our ISPs, who want to sell us something then have us never use it, whether our already meagre upstream bandwidth, or unwritten but strictly enforced monthly caps (*cough* Verizon *cough*). Never forget, in the heat of all the debate on the subject, that "net neutrality" only applies to big companies who view us as consumers of content. We small-scale end users have never enjoyed neutrality.
So to answer the question - We can truly move to an "online" desktop just as soon as enough of us force the ISPs to let us use the bandwidth we pay for however the hell we want. Not before.
Yes ... and no. Need synchronization. (Score:3, Interesting)
Slow news day. (Score:3)
Amazing! It turns out that there is a risk that data might be lost when the systems storing it fail. Indded, this is a remarkable revelation.
People need to get real. There is no magic with any service. Faults occur and mistakes are made. If anything, your data is safer with Google than anyone else because they know how to properly deal with huge volumes of data and how to preserve it correctly. Many service providers and most home users have no clue how to survive data loss and client applications that store mails on your disk do little to improve reliability in the absense of redundancy and backups.
To tangentally plug Apple, I am looking forward to Time Machine on Mac OS X 10.5 which uses the copy-on-write features of ZFS to provide incremental backups.
I, for one... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's ALL about control. For instance, Microsoft would love to make an OS that you rent rather than buy. Moving large portions of the software industry to a rental model is a software shop's wet dream, and Web Apps are a perfect way to introduce and enforce such a model. What happens when they have your data and the (proprietary) applications to read/write/process that data? Do you think the cost of software will go up or down with their increased leverage? "Okay, you don't want to pay anymore for using Enumerate(c)? That's fine, we'll send you your binary data files in a few months or so. Have fun getting the data out of them." You know how just about every EULA under the sun makes it clear that the software has, essentially, no guarantee as to performance? If web apps have the same lack of guarantee, what leverage do you have if you want to switch to a different software provider? It's the best form of lock-in yet devised.
Of course, people will argue that, 'Of course, we'll still keep local backups', or 'Our computers will not be THAT thin of a client'. Sure they will. Until the killer app comes out that there IS no local version of; Google is making tentative steps in that direction. That's the whole point of FOSS, particularly open document standards - so you, as a user of that data, have the leverage to pick and choose a different software provider, or write code yourself, or hire someone to do it from scratch, to access that data. I have little interest in contributing/participating in a software model that reduces the limited control I have today.
Re:Never used Outlook or Thunderbird (Score:4, Insightful)
Whippersnapper.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you have many email accounts like me, it's handy to have a single interface (the mail client) for handling all of them, instead of having to visit multiple sites a day just to check for new mail (let alone search for a particular message when you're not sure in which account it ended up).
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The problem isn't being web based. (Score:5, Insightful)
That subscript "BETA" under the GMail logo is giving you all the reason anyone should need to avoid storing anything important within GMail. Like many Google products, GMail is still defined as a beta by the company. A well polished beta to be sure; but as long as it says beta on it, you should have no expectation of it remaining static or being 100% stable. They could delete everyones accounts and reset or scrap the whole thing tomorrow, and they would be completely within their rights.
If you want to have expectation of safe retention of mail that goes through GMail, you should use the tools that Google has provided and download it to your PC via POP3. Then YOU can be responsible for its backup and retention.
I'm not saying it's right, I'm just pointing out that no one has any right to claim that Google screwed them by losing their important email that they [the user] were housing on a BETA email service.
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Re:beta (Score:4, Insightful)
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