I have been having problems accessing my Gmail account this morning. Mostly, I haven't been able to bring up the webpage to login. I did log in and send a couple of emails before it went down again. I have another email account, so it isn't that big of a deal. In fact, I kind of like it in a perverse sort of way - knowing the the omnipresent Google has problems with their website and web applications. Although I don't think a client would accept that as an excuse if one of my applications goes down... One area of concern is how much of your information is stored with Google, or any other company. As more and more applications and data move to the Internet, service outages become a big deal. Not being able to make a purchase from Amazon for a couple of hours typically doesn't halt your day. But not having access to email, your calendar and contacts can make life difficult. Even though Gmail is a free service, people expect it to work and rely on it for communication. Update: Gmail is working fine and now other sites are not coming up. I guess it must be my internet connection or something else strange. I can't ping a couple of sites or bring them up in either IE or Firefox, although the vast majority of other sites come up without a problem. I logged into a server in California and routed my web browser through that, and the sites are coming up fine. My girlfriend can see them at work in Seattle, so something is amiss with my connection and not the websites. If it persists, I'll have to call Speakeasy and find out what the problem is.