Gmail service falters horribly

Today was not a good day in Gmail history. Transactions were slow; lots of dialog boxes popping up saying the system was unable to complete the transaction; and, worst of all, mail not delivered for many hours.

Something bad happened to the Gmail service starting about 3 days ago. I'm not sure if Google has simply handed out too many invitations and scaled the service beyond server capacity -- or if there's something more ominous about the Gmail architecture.

Even though Gmail is in beta, I've assumed that Google's awesome computer science talent and server capacity meant it's a rock-solid offering. Today, I learned that that assumption was wrong.


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