Slashdot Mirror
Lost Gmail Emails and the Future of Web Apps
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'?"
You have the potential of losing email anywhere you store it--it's trading the server for your desktop, in a way. Every new solution used en masse will have new problems. I suppose I'm always a lot more worried about hard drive meltdowns then server problems--someone takes a lot better care of those, or so I'm told.
No one ever loses their data on their PC.
Do we want too? I don't like the idea of somebody besides me having ALL of my data.
I use Gmail for Domains and love it -- we've even been moving customers over to it and they love it.
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.
Personally I don't want any email stored on my computer. Granted, I have enough space for it, but with different breeds of viruses and what not, I'd rather not make provision for them to occupy a single sector.
As to the contacts and emails being lost... Backup, backup, backup! GMail has an export feature.
Those users were victims of a deliberate cross-site scripting attack in Firefox 2.0. If this problem had involved Windows Live Mail and IE7, do you honestly think we'd be using terms like "lost" and dodging the real issue, which is browser security?
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).
You can use POP (google cache link, the original seems to be missing) to back up your Gmail mail....Anyone have a alternate method that they use?
>> "What would the robut do? Frame someone!"
... why would we really want to move to an online desktop in the first place? The PC revolution moved us away from a mainframe/terminal environment. Why would we want to move back to a similiar model?
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
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.
Those of us who have been using email for two or three decades.
Whippersnapper.
Download my free songs!
will probably never move to an online desktop. (bet you were expecting something about overlords)
(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).
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
...whatever you mean by that. This is about control over my stuff. Or rather perception of control. I am a control freak. Almost. And I am not alone. I had an issue with using software like Outlook in the first place (file format and such) because I may lose access to my archive. Now someone is trying to convince me to give up yet more control. Thanks, but no, thanks. My willingness to trade this control for release from my responsibilities (for taking care of my stuff) only goes that far.
I hope and expect the on-line desktop to be as successful as Java-station (or whatever it was called).
-m-
I would like to die like my grandfather did - sleeping. And not screaming in terror, like his passengers.
First, this loss of data by Google doesn't say much about the online vs. desktop storage debate. Chances are that less people have lost email through this recent gmail foul-up than who lost their email because their own computer crashed. It's just that now there's someone to point the finger at.
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.
Given the nature of the internet, will it ever be possible to truly move to an 'online desktop'?"
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.
Yeah, but you'll stop getting paychecks and he'll move your desk down to the basement. While you're down there, we've got a little insect problem. Could you take care of that? That'd be great.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
What needs to be done beyond actually fixing the bug is for Google to come out with an assurance that folks will be able to restore potentially lost data in the event that something like this ever happens again, otherwise there's clearly no good reason to store anything important on GMail.
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.
I think it's absolutely possible. But I think a synchronizing system like .Mac uses makes more sense. In the event that you are unable to connect to the internet service (you're down / they're down / ...) you still have everything from your last synchronization. And this also provides even more backups of your important data.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Your "control" is an illusion, and the potential to lose your data is just as real. In fact, a service org probably has RAIDed drives and automated and offsite backup systems superior to what most people are doing on thier own... if they're doing it at all.
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.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
It isn't necessary to completely move to an 'online' desktop. Desktops as we know them now have their place, they have their own significant advantages, and I am sure that with time we will all be using both. A lot of people can't imagine an "online desktop," but the next batch of netizens will probably already be accustomed to the idea, and will use it, alongside a traditional desktop OS, be it a linux distro, Mac's OS, or Windows. As for losing all yours emails, shit happens. Anything you have any use for should be: a) copied to own harddrive b) if important enough, printed out
When something's in "beta" for over two years now, it becomes less of a product status and more of an excuse.
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
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).
Score: i, Imaginary
You can not directly control the computer or the programs that it runs. You merely interact with it. Your idea of control is an illusion. With snail-mail you have paper, you can directly control that paper. With e-mail the computer has bits and bytes, you have what it shows you.
FreeBSD: The Power to Serve!
The nice thing about GMail is that having your email on the server, and having it on your desktop, are not mutually exclusive. It's trivial, if you know what you're doing, to set up your GMail account so that it's always backed up to a local machine. There are even step by step instructions for doing it. You just set up a POP connection and suck down your entire mailfile, and then set up your local mailreader to download the new ones periodically.
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.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I would not call it an 'illusion'. For one reason or another, enthusiasts of on-line services assume their detractors to be technologically inept bozos. That is short sighted. The matter is that I can (and I am forced) to take steps to ensure the security of my data. And I alone am to blame if I fail to do so. There is definitely something to what you wrote. I did realize that when I wrote my post. This is what 'perception of control' was supposed to mean.
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-
I would like to die like my grandfather did - sleeping. And not screaming in terror, like his passengers.
I don't think Yahoo Mail existed a decade ago, or that was very close to its launch date. Email clients were (still are???) common in academic environments too. A decade ago I was still using Pine (via IMAP), whereas a lot of people had switched to Netscape Communicator. I don't remember many people back then using web mail - it just wasn't very common or popular yet. Apologies for doubting you, but your claim of not using an MUA even though you've used email for over a decade seems rather far fetched - what've you been doing in that time if it wasn't academia or corporate? Most people not in those environments didn't get on the email bandwagon until sometime after 1996.
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.
Why bother.
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.
I see you've never lost a letter sent through the postal service. Good for you. Will you be contacting Guinness and Ripley's, or shall I?
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 your own mind, either.
For those of you who think you do have complete control over your own mind, here's a thought for you: Danny DeVito outside on a cold day wearing nothing but some peanut butter and a smile. See? If you really had complete control over your mind, you probably wouldn't have pictured that visually.
I agree that they probably have better redundancy than the average user, however, if they are taking the responsibility for my data, they should be making backups that can recover in case of data loss. RAID is good, however if a file is corrupt, or deleted, then it is corrupt on multiple disks or deleted from multiple disks.
Are they willing to take on the added cost of backup/storage. If so, how far back to the backups go? How often is the backup run?
If my data is local, then it's my responsibility to make backups.
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
You haven't said anything that's incorrect, but everything you said applies to your own PC/Server/whatever at home...
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 would have taken you more than a couple of hours that get it back up, and possibly without any data.
Other than outages, generally access is enhanced by these web-based services. Ever been NOT at home and needed to lookup something from your inbox? Well, it's pretty hard if all your email are in outlook/thunderbird on your PC at home... And I do realize that many people on Slashdot probably run their own webmail and imap server on their basement server farm (me included), but again I am talking for most people here.
If you've got server functions running on your desktop, you don't have either a desktop or a server...
Just junk food for thought...
In fact, a service org probably has RAIDed drives and automated and offsite backup systems superior to what most people are doing on thier own... if they're doing it at all.
I'm having trouble resolving this comment with the topic of the thread, namely "Lost GMail Emails."
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
For the obscenely paranoid (or maybe not given this event), one could have a stand-alone box completely removed from any working environment (VM?) and use a pop app to download the messages yet leave them on the server- a tactic that I've employed in the past with other services. This way you have a copy on that server that can't infect those around it (viruses wouldn't be launched and super-high security measures would be dealt upon the inbox). Even going so far as to convert everything to text only and strip attachments... Now this wouldn't be restorable to GMail, but it would be a semi-inefficient way to back things up. Hmm... how about a server with multiple clients and then you charge to back up their webmail for them?!? Sounds like an easy way to do nothing and get paid for it.
Number of users for whom I've lost email: 0
:)
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 working for a big company somehow makes people smarter (even though I presently work for a huge company), but the fact remains - the ISP in my basement is more reliable than Google, in terms of reliability that matter to me. I don't have the *capacity*, but that is 100% irrelevant. I also don't have several layers of clueless management and CYA forms to fill out.
Lots of people who read and post to the dot here aren't your average "just know enough to be dangerous" home sysadmins. Some of us actually know what we're doing.
A lot of people are bandying about this "illusion of control" argument, and it's a valid one to make. Still, so far the comments are missing a really important nuance.
When I have a catastrophic failure, either at work or at home, I stay up all day and night to get the thing working again. I call in the tapes from offsite, I start a new server build while I'm waiting, and I try to minimize the downtime as much as possible. It's my job/posterior on the line, so minutes are important.
Now, put the shoe on the other foot. I'm a sysadmin at Google taking care of someone's free mailbox. Think I'm going to skip the Christmas party just to get your mailbox back? Yeah sure, I care about the company's PR, but only so much. If it were a Google employee's mailbox, then maybe. The level of effort and sense of urgency is a lot less when it's not your foot in the fire.
just a thought,
jb
I don't see why you don't set your Gmail to POP all email to your desktop.
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.
It's not totally an illusion. Statistically it may be safer to fly but the driving accidents include every moron, 16-year-old, and grandma driving down the road. When I drive I do have some control over whether or not I have an accident. It's not 100% fullproof because there are impossible odds at times but I have personally come out of many bad situations unscathed based on driving skill and/or having a high performance vehicle.
I love flying but only if I'm the one flying the plane.
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.
Gmail offers POP downloads for both all incoming AND outgoing e-mail. Install Thunderbird, set up with Gmail, download everything once a week and backup your contacts to Thunderbird's address book. There, problem solved :-)
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)