Wednesday, September 9, 2020

Gmail Downtime and G Suite Status Dashboard

Today I encountered an error when I tried to login to my Gmail account via my Safari browser (version 13.1.2) on my 2016 MacBook Pro running macOS Catalina (version 10.15.6).

I was amused when I clicked on the “Show Detailed Technical Info” link which revealed “Numeric Code: 2”—that does not exactly fit my conception of detailed technical information, so I assume it is just quirky Google humor. There is a Gmail Community discussion thread on the topic with no definitive resolution of the issue. The error message also provides a link to G Suite Status Dashboard. This is what the dashboard looks like:

It is described in more detail in this G Suite Admin Help page. Users can check the current status of core G Suite services, such as Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Meet.

Interestingly, while I’ve had a Gmail account for more than a decade, I am not using G Suite services. I’m not sure if the G Suite Status Dashboard reflects the status of regular Gmail (i.e., not part of G Suite). Based on the indicators above, my guess is that regular Gmail is excluded since the G Suite Status Dashboard was not reporting any service outage or service disruption with Gmail today (although there was service disruption with Google Drive yesterday, 9/8/20).

Another observation was that while I was unable to login to Gmail via Safari, I had no problem accessing Gmail via Chrome just a few seconds after receiving the temporary error in Safari. This occurred 3 times toady, so I wonder if the Gmail folks were tinkering with something that created some kind of incompatibility with Safari browsers. I did not try Firefox or my Gmail iOS app.

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