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Gmail’s Down! – Rethinking Cloud Computing

I've been a big proponent of Gmail and most Google Applications, however I've always been wary of the pitfalls with 'cloud computing'. I think storing information online is a great idea, but I still feel that it's unreliable, Google services rarely go down, but I don't think that's good enough. Most people are dependant on online services and if they break there could be major repercussions, be it loss of money or not being able to hand in a college assignment. Cloud computing just isn't at the point were we can completely rely on it.

My current method of backup was to forward my college email to my Gmail, but this doesn't help if I can't access the internet and really need to check something. This interruption is the reason I've decided to revisit Google Gears as I've come to a point in my life were email is very important to my academics and I've got important documents I should really have local backups of.

I prefer Google Gears to other email clients such as Thunderbird or Evolution Mail, because I’ve grown accustomed to the Gmail UI and in my mind when I think of email I think, browser.

Ultimately I think the best solution is syncing your local information with the 'cloud' to give both reassurances that your information is backed up, read locally, but also be accessed from other machines via the internet if needed. Programs like Dropbox are a prime example of this unity.

Note: I noticed Gmail went down around 9PM GMT and is still not back up, just logged back on and it's back up.

Related posts:

1. Gmail Finally Out of Beta, Who knew?