Gmail Is Ailing -- Again

Today's problems come less than a month after Gmail's last major disruption. What's going on?

I awoke this morning to find that hundreds of folks were reading an old Techologizer story on Gmail problems-which is always a sign that Gmail is misbehaving on a grand scale. As usual, I checked my own two Gmail accounts, and found that my inboxes were available-but that both were displaying a message I'd never seen before (click on the image to see a larger version):

Then I checked the Google Apps status page, which confirmed that something was amiss but didn't mention contacts (I'm also not sure why it calls it "Google Mail," but let's avoid addressing that for now):

(Click on the image to see a larger version.)

Lastly, I turned to Twitter, which rarely explains why something is going on, but which can certainly help determine whether it's widespread. It did confirm that some people can't get into Gmail, period:

Whatever's going on, it comes less than a month after Gmail's last major disruption. When this is sorted out, I hope that Google not only publishes an explanatory blog post, but also one about that addresses more overarching issues concerning Gmail