Google still seems to be having some trouble with Gmail, after last week's global outage on Friday. The Mountain View company has acknowledged a bug that affected users on a few platforms - iOS app, mobile browsers, and an offline version of Gmail.
Said to be caused by a
Gmail software update to the platforms, the bug resulted in certain actions being applied to the messages other than those selected, or being viewed. This could have resulted in messages being inadvertently sent to trash or spam folders, or otherwise miscategorised.
The bug was affecting users between January 15 and January 22, and according to
Google has since been fixed. Google, in its 'Important Notice' to users (
reported by the Verge), has not revealed how many users on the mentioned platforms were affected. Google is asking Gmail users to check their spam and trash folders for missing mails before February 14.
It is not yet known if the buggy software update is linked to the
brief Gmail outage on January 24 that was also attributed to a software update. Apologising for the service disruption, a Google spokesperson said on Friday:
"Earlier today, most Google users who use logged-in services like Gmail, Google+, Calendar and Documents found they were unable to access those services for approximately 25 minutes. For about 10 percent of users, the problem persisted for as much as 30 minutes longer."
"Whether the effect was brief or lasted the better part of an hour, please accept our apologies-we strive to make all of Google's services available and fast for you, all the time, and we missed the mark today."
"The issue has been resolved, and we're now focused on correcting the bug that caused the outage, as well as putting more checks and monitors in place to ensure that this kind of problem doesn't happen again."
Google hadn't disclosed the full extent of the Gmail glitch, but the brief outage was believed to have affected millions of people, including those using the service at work. Complaints were posted online from Europe, Canada, the United States and elsewhere.
(Image credit: The Verge)